Plot (Big)

Makes MATLAB's line plots much faster.

Description

This simple tool intercepts data going into a plot and reduces it to the smallest possible set that looks identical given the number of pixels available on the screen. It then updates the data as a user zooms or pans. This is useful when a user must plot a very large amount of data and explore it visually.

This works with MATLAB's built-in line plot functions, allowing the functionality of those to be preserved.

Instead of:

plot(t, x);

One could use:

reduce_plot(t, x);

• Required Products: MATLAB
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 8.0 (R2012b)

[Tucker McClure]

Excellent point, dberm22.

Kelly, good suggestions. Plotting detailed coastlines would be a great use case for improvement! In the meantime, if you're displaying landmasses with patches, do you know about reducepatch? This could be used (pre-rendering) for multiple levels of fidelity.

Thanks to all for the ratings!

[dberm22]

I did my own testing on this for speed, and at first I was tempted to give this 1 star because the tic-toc results show that reduce_plot() takes twice as long to create the plot than the regular plot() does. Don't be fooled by this! tic-toc does not take into account how long it takes to show the plot on the screen, for which reduce_plot() is extremely efficient. Also, with the such large amount of numbers I was using, zooming was rendered impossible with the normal plot() function. reduce_plot() was a life-saver in those scenarios.

plot() = 1.66s (create plot) + 7.54s (show on screen) = 9s total (& cannot zoom)
reduce_plot = 3.65s (create plot) + .8s (show on screen) = 4.45s total + .7s (zooming) = priceless

[Kelly Kearney]

Very useful function. However, it currently only works if your data describes a function (in the mathematical sense of one y per x). It would be great if it could be extended to work when the y axis is the independent variable, or for lines defining polygons (for example, I originally stumbled on this looking for a more efficient way to plot high-resolution coastlines while allowing lots of efficient zooming and panning).

[Jorge]

 

[Brett Shoelson]

Awesome!

[Adam Filion]

 

[Doug Hull]

 

[Michael]