adding legend for multiple surface in same graph

Hi,

I am relatively new to Matlab. I have a figure (attached) which has two surfaces . I want to create legend for each surface. Any idea/suggestion how I can create legend for each surface? I have the attached the figure.

This is my code to create this graph

close all
clear variables
clc
test = xlsread('Matlabinput.xlsx', 'c2:f20');
x=test(:,1);
y=test(:,2);
z=test(:,3);
v=test(:,4);

xlin = linspace(min(x),max(x),13);
ylin = linspace(min(y),max(y),13);
[X,Y] = meshgrid(xlin,ylin);
f = scatteredInterpolant(x,y,z);
f2 = scatteredInterpolant(x,y,v);
Z = f(X,Y);
Z2 = f2(X,Y);
figure
mesh(X,Y,Z); %interpolated
axis tight ;
hold on;
surf( X, Y, Z, 'EdgeColor', 'black', 'FaceColor', [255,100,0]/255, 'FaceAlpha', .5 );
plot3(x,y,z,'.' );

axis tight; 
mesh(X,Y,Z2) %interpolated
axis tight; 
surf( X, Y, Z2, 'EdgeColor', 'black', 'FaceColor', [1,255,200]/255, 'FaceAlpha', .9);
plot3(x,y,v,'.' ) %nonuniform

%hold on

xlabel('h')
ylabel('s')
zlabel('tc')
alpha(0.5) %transparent

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Roni

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Side note: you do not need surf() and then plot3(). You can use

surf( X, Y, Z, 'EdgeColor', 'black', 'FaceColor', [255,100,0]/255, 'FaceAlpha', .5, 'Marker', '.' );

To legend appropriately, you would use

h1 = surf( X, Y, Z, 'EdgeColor', 'black', 'FaceColor', [255,100,0]/255, 'FaceAlpha', .5, 'Marker', '.' );

and later

h2 = surf( X, Y, Z2, 'EdgeColor', 'black', 'FaceColor', [1,255,200]/255, 'FaceAlpha', .9, 'Marker', '.');

and then

legend([h1, h2], {'First Surface', 'Second Surface'});

[Roni Mohammad]

Thanks Walter.

[Kien Pham]

Hi Walter, do you know of a way to turn off the facecolors altogether for the legend of multuple surface plots?

I set my FaceColor to 'interp,' and do not want a color to represent an interpolated range. I prefer to set the FaceColor of the boxes to a neutral white if possible. Let me know. Thanks.

[Walter Roberson]

In cases where you want aa legend that does not match the automatic legend rules, it is often easier to create some dummy invisible graphics objects that have the properties that you would like to have show up, and legend those instead . Sometimes there are ways to get the desired outputs by changing properties after calling legend but it is not clear that it is worth the fight at times .