Introduction to Mapping Graphics
Even though geospatial data often is manipulated and analyzed
without being displayed, high-quality interactive cartographic displays
can play valuable roles in exploratory data analysis, application
development, and presentation of results.
Using Mapping Toolbox capabilties, you can display geographic
information almost as easily as you can display tabular or time-series
data in MATLAB plots. Most mapping functions are similar to MATLAB plotting
functions, except they accept data with geographic/geodetic coordinates
(latitudes and longitudes) instead of Cartesian and polar coordinates.
Mapping functions typically have the same names as their MATLAB counterparts,
with the addition of an 'm' suffix (for maps).
For example, the Mapping Toolbox analog to the MATLAB plot function
is plotm.
Mapping Toolbox software manages most of the details in
displaying a map. It projects your data, cuts and trims it to specified
limits, and displays the resulting map at various scales. With the
toolbox you can also add customary cartographic elements, such as
a frame, grid lines, coordinate labels, and text labels, to your displayed
map. If you change your projection properties, or even the projection
itself, some Mapping Toolbox map displays are automatically redrawn
with the new settings, undoing any cuts or trims if necessary. See Accessing, Computing, and Inverting Map Projection Data for
information on how to project data without displaying it.
The toolbox also makes it easy to modify and manipulate maps.
You can modify the map display and mapped objects either from the
command line or through and property editing tools you can invoke
by clicking on the display.
Note
In its current implementation, the toolbox maintains the map
projection and display properties by storing special data in the UserData property
of the map axes. The toolbox also takes over the UserData property
of mapped objects. Therefore, never attempt to set the UserData property
of a map axes or a projected map object. Do not apply the MATLAB get function
to axes UserData, depend on the contents of UserData in
any way, or apply functions that set or get UserData to
the handles of map axes or mapped objects. Only use the Mapping Toolbox functions getm and setm to
obtain and modify map axes properties. |
 | Creating and Viewing Maps | | Using worldmap and usamap |  |
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