Example pages containing: tips | resources | functions/procedures
Controlling the draw order involves the use of "DrawOrder" resources that indicate which of three phases a set of elements are drawn in: "PreDraw", "Draw", or "PostDraw".
There are 12 draw order resources. The tfPolyDrawOrder resource is a special one for primitives (polygons, polylines, and polymarkers):
draworder_1.ncl: This example shows
how to attach a polygon to an XY plot, setting tfPolyDrawOrder to "Draw" to force the
polygon to be drawn first (the default is "PostDraw"). If you don't
set this, the polygon will mask part of the line.
Note: this script requires a bug fix that was added after V5.1.1 was released. To run this example with V5.1.1 and earlier, try draworder_1_fix.ncl for a work-around.
As of V5.2.0, you can set tfPolyDrawOrder when calling gsn_add_polygon. Before V5.2.0, you had to set this resource when calling the plotting function (gsn_y).
To run this example with V5.1.1 and earlier, try draworder_1_fix.ncl for a work-around.
draworder_2.ncl: This example shows
how to force the filled contours to be drawn before filled map areas
by setting cnFillDrawOrder to
"PreDraw". The mpFillDrawOrder
resource defaults to "Draw", so these filled areas get drawn after
elements in the "PreDraw" phase.
The first frame shows the default draw order, the second frame draws the filled contours first.
Note: normally the land would be filled in gray. However, the color map used in this example ("BlAqGrYeOrRe") doesn't have gray in it, so NCL used the closest match---white.
draworder_3.ncl: This example shows
how to force map grid lines and contour labels to be drawn before
filled map areas by setting cnLabelDrawOrder and mpGridAndLimbDrawOrder to "PreDraw".
The first frame shows the default draw order, the second frame shows the changed draw order
draworder_4.ncl:
This example shows how to attach polygons and polylines
to a map plot, using different "draw order" phases.
Whenever you attach primitives to a plot, you can only set tfPolyDrawOrder once for all those primitives. In order to have different draw orders for each primitive, then, you must create a dummy object (called a "LogLin plot"), overlay this on the map, and then use this new object to attach your primitives to.
Note: this script requires a bug fix that was added after V5.1.1 was released. To run this example with V5.1.1 and earlier, try draworder_4_fix.ncl for a work-around.
In this script, see how the three triangles are drawn during different phases. This is done by creating special objects for the blue and green triangles.
draworder_5.ncl:
This example shows how to attach polymarkers
to a map plot, such that the markers are drawn over filled
ocean areas, but under filled land areas.
To do this, you must create two map plots: one with filled land and transparent ocean, and one with filled ocean and transparent land. This way you can attach the markers to the ocean-filled plot, and then overlay the land-filled plot which will mask the markers.
To make sure the two maps stay together if you resize them, this script adds one as an annotation of the other using gsn_add_annotation.
polyg_12.ncl:
This example shows how to layer various polygons on
a map to get a particular effect.
As the extratropical polygons (red/blue) require the ocean to overlay the polygons, and the tropical polygons (green/yellow) require the land to overlay the polygons, the only way to get the desired effect is to draw two plots, and to set tfPolyDrawOrder equal to Draw.
A third blank plot is drawn over the previous two to draw the border correctly.
This is a reproduction of figure 1b from Kutzbach et al. 2008, Climate Dynamics, 30:567-579.
