How to Make All Children of a Figure Invisible?

Imagine I have a figure with three axes objects and a rectangle.

hfig = figure;
hax1 = axes;
hax2 = axes;
hax3 = axes;
hrec1 = rectangle;

How can I make the axes objects and the rectangle invisible, so only an empty figure is visible, and then again visible?

Answer 1

[Adam]

You could store them all in an array and then you can just use

set( hGraphics, 'Visible', 'off' )

Certainly your axes would be better as hAx(1), hAx(2), hAx(3) rather than 3 individual variables and you can tag a rectangle onto the same array too as it will just be an array of general graphics objects.

Recursively hunting through children can be a messy business although there may be functions that can do it, or something on file exchange.

A rectangle will be parented by an axes though so you can explicitly get children of your axes and hide them rather than starting at figure level.

[Rightia Rollmann]

And how can I create the array hGraphics?

[Adam]

hGraphics = [ hax1, hax2, hax3, hrec1 ];

Or preferably put them straight in the array as e.g.

hGraphics(1) = axes;
hGraphics(2) = axes;
...