export MATLAB figure in PDF

I read several posts about this but I could not find a solution.

when I try to export a figure to PDF it is saved anyway as BMP.

I tried the following:

1) saving from the file menu of the figure using saveas PDF

2) guided export through the figure export menu (selecting painters, as opposed to openGL)

3) using print with the -dpdf argument

print(['filename.pdf'],'-dpdf','-bestfit')

4) using the saveas function

the problem is that sometimes on some figures it works fine

other times it does not.

Restarting MATLAB does not help.

increasing the JAVA heap memory does not help.

I also tried on MATLAB 2018b. It does not help either.

[Walter Roberson]

What symptoms do you see when it does not work fine?

[Rishabh Singh]

You can try printing the figure and using "print to pdf" to convert your figure to pdf.

Answer 1

[Richard Quist]

I am guessing by what you describe as "saved anyway as a BMP" is that you are getting a PDF file but the contents of that file are an image, rather than "true vector" (scalable) output.

If that is the case, my answer on a similar post should help.