Create and save figure without drawing

I would like to create figures within a script without actually drawing them, on the assumption that this will save time, RAM, and GPU resources. I would like to save those objects as pictures. However, each figure is a layering of two different datasets. In an interactive setting I would achieve this through the hold on command

A = randi(9,1,15);
B = randi(9,1,15);
MyScatter = scatter([1:15],A)
hold on
MyScatter = scatter([1:15],B)

But this still creates a figure window and draws the objects to the screen.

Is there a way to do what I describe, perhaps via copyobj? And/or am I unlikely to see significant computational savings by doing so?

Answer 1

[Mahdi Hayati]

To save figure as picture in your system, without actually showing the figure, first make your figure invisible:

f = figure('visible','off');

then go for your scatter and add them to the ' f ' which is your invisible figure.

finally you can use saveas function to save the figure as picture.

[Gabriel Stanley]

Well, I had already seen posts describing the visibility toggle, however my initial impression from those posts was that this was considered a bad practise. However, I have not seen any negative consequences from donig this, so I thank you for the push.

[Walter Roberson]

Layout will not always work until the object is rendered. For example tick labels might not be correct if adding an additional component resized an axes (resizing can affect number of ticks generated)

[Gabriel Stanley]

Understood, and thank you for the warning. I had been going to preallocate/define the axes properties of the scatter plot, but It's very late where I am and for reasons I haven't had time to run down,

MyFigure = figure('visibile','off')
MyAxes= axes(MyFigure,%Various Name/Value pairs)

Was thowing an error indicating MyFigure wasn't an appropriate handle. If I notice any significant problem while putting the scatterplots into my report, I'll remember this and see about debugging the handle issue.