manually setting plot properties

I'm really struggling with an apparently simple piece of code for plotting a graph. The actual graphs are made up of 5 subplots but I've only reproduced 2 below. I'm trying to get the graph in A4 portrait style (for full-page printing) and with every axis following a fixed size (eg 100 x 500px). I don't really know how to use axes_handles -- I've tried using 'set' to specify axis properties and it didn't work. I don't really know how to rewrite the following code in order to gain control of my plots. I need to do this by code rather than using plotting tools as I need to do this for thousands of graphs. Thanks,

ax(1) = subplot(2,1,1);
            plot(date1, Data(:,2),'-b',...
                date1, Data(:,3),':k');
                legend('Average','Total', 'Location', 'SouthOutside', 'Orientation', 'horizontal');
                title('24hr Data');
                ylabel('Energy (Wm^2)');
                datetick('x', 16);                      
                xlim([min(date1) max(date1)]);

ax(2) = subplot(2,1,2);
plot(date1, rsum, ':m',...
                date1,Data(:,4),'-b');                           
                legend('Average','Open', 'Location', 'SouthOutside', 'Orientation', 'horizontal');
                title('24h');
                ylabel('Vol (2)');
                datetick('x', 16);                      
                xlim([min(date1) max(date2)]);
linkaxes(ax,'x');

Answer 1

[azarm]

Hi, if you want to set a fix size for x-y coordinates , just use the function "axis" in matlab!

- doc axis

Answer 2

[Patrick Kalita]

I'm not sure I entirely understand the question, but maybe this will be a starting point for you.

First, the command orient can help you set up the figure so that when printed, it will print in portrait mode and use the full page. Second, setting the figure's PaperType property will tell the figure what size of paper to expect. To summarize, these are the two commands you would use:

orient tall
set(gcf, 'PaperType', 'A4')

You won't see any visible difference on screen, but when the figure is actually printed to paper, it should occupy the entire A4 page.