How can I bring patch in front of a surface plot?

Hi!

I am trying to plot a patch on top of a surface plot, but it always go 'behind'. Is there any way to bring it to the front?

figure;

s = surface(m.z, P, A,'edgecolor', 'none')

hold on;

patch([0,0,5.04,5.04], [0, 60, 60, 0], 'red', 'FaceAlpha',.3)

I need to shade an area of the surface plot, so I'd like to have it on top of it. Following you see a simpler but representative example of the problem I am facing, the patch is hidden (see the bottom left corner):

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

The patch call does not define the ‘Z’ level, so by default it is zero. Change that to put it where you want it (this puts it at 10):

zlvl = 10;
patch([0,0,5.04,5.04], [0, 60, 60, 0], ones(1,4)*zlvl, 'red', 'FaceAlpha',.3)

To illustrate:

x = -1:0.1:1;
[X,Y] = ndgrid(x);
Z = X.^2 - Y.^3;

figure
surf(X, Y, Z)
hold on
patch([0 0 0.5 0.5], [0 1 1 0], 'r')
patch([0 0 0.5 0.5]-0.5, [0 1 1 0], ones(1,4)*1.5, 'g')
hold off
grid on

.

[gpr]

that's cool, thanks. In that case, I am wondering: what if I want to shade z>10? with your method you define the maximum z, what if I want it to appear for z>10?

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!

Define ‘zlvl’ to be whatever you want.

One option is:

zlvl = max(A(:));

to have it above everything else (assuming we are looking at the surface you are plotting from the top down). Define it similarly for other options.

.