Printing Maps to Scale
Maps are often printed at a size that
makes objects on paper a particular fraction of their real size. The
linear ratio of the mapped to real object sizes is called map
scale, and it is usually notated with a colon as "1:1,000,000"
or "1:24,000." Another way of specifying scale is to
call out the printed and real lengths, for example "1 inch
= 1 mile."
You can specify the printed scale using the paperscale function.
It modifies the size of the printed area on the page to match the
scale. If the resulting dimensions are larger than your paper, you
can reduce the amount of empty space around the map using tightmap, zoom,
or panzoom, and by changing the axes position to
fill the figure. This also reduces the amount of memory needed to
print with the zbuffer (raster image) renderer.
Be sure to set the paper scale last. For example,
set(gca,'Units','Normalized','Position',[0 0 1 1])
tightmap
paperscale(1,'in', 5,'miles')
The paperscale function also can take a
scale denominator as its first and only argument. If you want the
map to be printed at 1:20,000,000, type
paperscale(2e7)
To check the size and extent of text and the relative position
of axes, use previewmap, which resizes the figure
to the printed size.
previewmap
For more information on printing, see the Printing and Exporting section
of the MATLAB Graphics documentation.
 | Using Colormaps and Colorbars | | Manipulating Geospatial Data |  |
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