box

Display axes outline

Syntax

box on

box off

box

box(ax,___)

Description

box on displays the box outline around the current axes. This option sets the Box property of the current axes to 'on'.

box off does not display the box outline around the current axes. This option sets the Box property of the current axes to 'off'. This option is the default behavior.

box toggles the display of the box outline.

box(ax,___) uses the axes specified by ax instead of the current axes. Specify the axes as the first input argument for any of the previous syntaxes. Use single quotes around the 'on' and 'off' inputs, such as box(ax,'on').

Examples

Display Box Outline Around Axes

Plot a surface and display the box outline around the axes.

[X,Y,Z] = peaks;
surf(X,Y,Z)
box on

Turn off the display of the box outline.

box off

Change Style of Box Outline

First, plot a surface and display the box outline around the axes. By default, the outline appears around the back planes of the axes because the BoxStyle property of the axes is set to 'back'.

[X,Y,Z] = peaks;
surf(X,Y,Z)
box on

Next, display the outline around the entire axes by setting the BoxStyle property to 'full'. Starting in R2014b, you can use dot notation to set properties. If you are using an earlier release, use the set function instead.

ax = gca;
ax.BoxStyle = 'full';

Change Color of Box Outline

Create a scatter plot and display the box outline around the axes.

x = rand(10,1);
y = rand(10,1);
scatter(x,y)
box on

Change the color of the box outline in the x-axis direction by setting the XColor property of the axes. Starting in R2014b, you can use dot notation to set properties. If you are using an earlier release, use the set function instead.

ax = gca;
ax.XColor = 'red';

Turn Off Box Outline for Specific Axes

Create a figure with two subplots and assign the Axes objects to the variables ax1 and ax2. Plot a line in each subplot. Remove the box outline around the lower subplot by specifying ax2 as the first input argument to box.

ax1 = subplot(2,1,1);
plot(ax1,1:10)

ax2 = subplot(2,1,2);
plot(ax2,1:10)
box(ax2,'off')

Input Arguments

ax — Target axes

Axes object | PolarAxes object

Target axes, specified as an Axes object or a PolarAxes object. If you do not specify the axes, then box affects the current axes.

Tips

• Some Cartesian axes properties affect the appearance of the box outline. This table lists a subset of axes properties related to the box outline.

  Axes Property	Description
  Box	Display of box outline
  BoxStyle	Style of box outline
  XColor, YColor, ZColor	Box outline color in the x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis directions
  LineWidth	Width of box outline, tick marks, and grid lines

• Some polar axes properties affect the appearance of the outline around the polar axes. If you are working with polar axes, then the box command controls the outline display when the theta-axis limits do not span 360 degrees. This table lists a subset of polar axes properties related to the outline.

  PolarAxes Property	Description
  Box	Display of full outline
  RColor, ThetaColor	Outline color
  LineWidth	Width of outline, tick marks, and grid lines

Algorithms

The box function sets the Box property of the Axes or PolarAxes object to either 'on' or 'off'.