How to keep plot window area of interest without drawing to the same plot?

plot(Y, 'r'); hold on;
plot(X);

That's how I plot.

When I zoom into a very specific region, I'd like to be able to re-run the code (generating X and Y) and draw a fresh plot, but keep the 'window', i.e. the region of interest where I zoomed in.

How to achieve that in a simple fashion?

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Jens - consider using linkaxes which will allow the axes on your different figures to have the same limits specified. And as you zoom in or out, or pan within one axes, the same behaviour affects the other one - so the axes limits for both figures are kept identical. Try the following

 % generate some data
 X = randi(255,42,1);
 Y = randi(128,52,1);

 % plot the data to first figure
 hFig1 = figure;
 plot(Y,'r');
 hold on;
 plot(X);

 % get the axes on the first figure (we assume only one)
 hAxes1 = findobj('Parent',hFig1,'Type','axes');

Now zoom in or pan within the axes so that the limits change. Now regenerate your data and repeat for the second figure

 % re-generate the data
 X = randi(255,42,1);
 Y = randi(128,52,1);

 % plot the data to second figure
 hFig2 = figure;
 plot(Y,'r');
 hold on;
 plot(X);

 % get the axes on the first figure (we assume only one)
 hAxes2 = findobj('Parent',hFig2,'Type','axes');

The axes limits for the second figure are not that for the first, so link the two

 linkaxes([hAxes1 hAxes2])

and both axes should have the same limits. From the above link, the first axes you supply to linkaxes determines the x- and y-limits for all linked axes, but manipulating the limits in either axes affects both.

Try the above and see what happens!

Note some of the above code can be simplified. For example,

 hAxes1 = findobj('Parent',hFig1,'Type','axes');

could be replaced with

 hAxes1 = gca;  % get current axes

but I prefer using findobj because it makes it a little more clear in grabbing a specific axes from a specific figure.