Clipping is known to not necessarily work for three-d plots:
With newer versions of MATLAB you can use addlistener to listen to the 'PostSet' limit events on the axes and update the surface's data with new data NaNing out everything outside of the new limits.
Alright, you piqued my interest:
function Clip3d
%Clip a three dimensional surface example
%
% Sean de Wolski 02/14/2013 - MathWorks
%
%Data
yy=randn(50,50);
xx=randn(50,50);
zz=randn(50,50);
%Objects
figure;
ax = axes;
h = surf(xx,yy,zz);
drawnow;
xlimits = get(ax,'XLim');
ylimits = get(ax,'YLim');
%Listen to changes
addlistener(ax,'XLim','PostSet',@(src,evt)ClipMe(src,evt));
addlistener(ax,'YLim','PostSet',@(src,evt)ClipMe(src,evt));
function ClipMe(src,evt)
%When limits change
zzNaN = zz; %copy
%Which changed?
if strcmp(get(src,'Name'),'XLim')
xlimits = evt.NewValue;
else
ylimits = evt.NewValue;
end
%Clip with Nans
zzNaN(xx<xlimits(1) | xx>xlimits(2)) = NaN;
zzNaN(yy<ylimits(1) | yy>ylimits(2)) = NaN;
set(h,'ZData',zzNaN); %update
drawnow;
end
end
