Is there a faster alternative to plot in MATLAB?

I have a large figure with multiple subplots being updated contenously with live data. The problem is that there is a delay because I have almost 10 subplot functions called at the same time. To my understanding MATLAB changed its graphic engine a few years back and that's what caused plotting to slow down. So I'm wondering if there is an alternative to plot or if there is a more efficent way of doing my plotting.

Here is an example of my code:

subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,1-height-margin_y,width,height])
plot(X,Y1)
subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,0.75-height-margin_y,width,height])
plot(X,Y2)
subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,0.5-height-margin_y,width,height])
plot(X,Y3)
subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,0.25-height-margin_y,width,height])
plot(X,Y4)
drawnow

This post seemed to suggest using set in place of plot, but I don't understand why that would be any faster.

Answer 1

[Kevin Phung]

im not too sure how the rest of your code looks like, but maybe you can clean it up by just assigning handles to your axes (each subplot).

so something like:

%% initialize axes
s1= subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,1-height-margin_y,width,height])
s2=subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,0.75-height-margin_y,width,height])
s3=subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,0.5-height-margin_y,width,height])
s4= subplot('Position',[width+3*margin_x,0.25-height-margin_y,width,height])

%% this part of your code does the updating, points to the specific subplot
plot(s1,X,Y1)
plot(s2,X,Y2)
plot(s3,X,Y3)
plot(s4,X,Y4)
drawnow

%% alternative method, instead of destroying and 
% creating a new line object each iteration which takes more time, 
% just change their values
s1.Children.YData = Y1;
s2.Children.YData = Y2;
s3.Children.YData = Y3;
s4.Children.YData = Y4;
% This method assumes there is only 1 line object (Children) for each axis.