Expand subplot to fill entire figure

Question

Tobin Fricke 2011-6-14

I often plot Bode plots to plot the magnitude and phase of a complex function:

ax = subplot(2,1,1)
semilogx(f, db(H));            % plot the magnitude
ax(2) = subplot(2,1,2);
semilogx(f, angle(H)*180/pi);  % plot the phase

Often I want to just look at the magnitude while ignoring the phase, but it would be nicer if this didn't mean commenting out the subplot commands.

Is there a simple way to temporarily expand one of these subplots to fill the entire figure, as if it were just a subplot(1,1,1)? Something like:

focus(ax(1)); % just look at ax(1)
restore(ax);  % return to the view of two subplots

?

Answer 1

Walter Roberson 2011-6-14

oldunits = get(ax(1), 'Units');
oldpos = get(ax(1), 'Position');
set(ax(1), 'Units', 'normal', 'Position', [0 0 1 1]);

Then later

set(ax(1), 'Units', oldunits, 'Position', oldpos);

If you were enthusiastic enough, you could store the old units and position via setappdata()