How do you pause rendering of a figure until you're done setting properties?

I have a script that creates a plot and then sets 9 different properties on that plot:

    heat = heatmap( ... )
    heat.ColorMethod = ...
    heat.MissingDataColor = ...
    heat.MissingDataLabel = ...
    heat.YLabel = ...
    heat.XLabel = ...
    heat.Title = ...
    heat.CellLabelColor = ...
    heat.Colormap = ...

It seems that what MATLAB is doing is rendering the original plot, then setting the first property and rendering the whole thing again, then setting the second property and rendering the whole thing again, and so on until all of the properties are set.

Rendering the same figure nine times when I only need the final render seems ridiculous. Is this indeed what's happening? If so, is it possible to tell MATLAB to wait until all of the properties are set until rendering the heatmap? I saw the drawnow function in the documentation which seems to imply that there is some kind of buffering of graphics updates going on, but is there any way to control it beyond flushing the buffer with drawnow?

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

Specify the property names and values in the heatmap call itself as a series of name-value pair arguments. See the example in the "Name-Value Pair Arguments" section on the heatmap documentation page.

Alternately you can call the set function to set multiple properties at once. In fact, in some cases you must do this, like when you want to change the XData and YData properties of a line created by plot to different sized data.

>> h = plot(1:10, 1:10);
>> h.XData = 1:11;
Warning: Error creating or updating Line
 Error in value of one or more of the following properties:  XData YData
 Array is wrong shape or size 
>> h.YData = 1:11;
>> set(h, 'XData', 1:12, 'YData', 1:12);

The line disappears when the second line issues the warning and reappears when the condition that caused the warning is corrected on the third line. The last line changes the X and Y data simultaneously and does not issue a warning.

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

This might work:

1. Find its parent figure (e.g. gcf) and set its 'Visible' property to 'off'
2. Change the properties
3. Set the figure's 'Visible' property back to 'on'