MATLAB Function Reference

area

Area fill of a two-dimensional plot

Syntax

• area(Y)
  area(X,Y)
  area(...,ymin)
  area(...,'PropertyName',PropertyValue,...)
  h = area(...)
  

Description

An area plot displays elements in Y as one or more curves and fills the area beneath each curve. When Y is a matrix, the curves are stacked showing the relative contribution of each row element to the total height of the curve at each x interval.

area(Y) plots the vector Y or the sum of each column in matrix Y. The x-axis automatically scales depending on length(Y) when Y is a vector and on size(Y,1)when Y is a matrix.

area(X,Y) plots Y at the corresponding values of X. If X is a vector, length(X) must equal length(Y) and X must be monotonic. If X is a matrix, size(X) must equal size(Y) and each column in X must be monotonic. To make a vector or matrix monotonic, use sort.

area(...,ymin) specifies the lower limit in the y direction for the area fill. The default ymin is 0.

area(...,'PropertyName',PropertyValue,...) specifies property name and property value pairs for the patch graphics object created by area.

h = area(...) returns handles of patch graphics objects. area creates one patch object per column in Y.

Remarks

area creates one curve from all elements in a vector or one curve per column in a matrix. The colors of the curves are selected from equally spaced intervals throughout the entire range of the colormap.

Examples

Plot the values in Y as a stacked area plot.

• Y = [   1, 5, 3;
          3, 2, 7;
          1, 5, 3;
          2, 6, 1];
  area(Y)
  grid on
  colormap summer
  set(gca,'Layer','top')
  title 'Stacked Area Plot'
  
  
  
  

See Also

• plot
  

Area, Bar, and Pie Plots for related functions

Area Graphs for more examples

any

asec