How do i get the colorbar and plot axes to remain the same during iteration?

I am trying to visualise a flow field for a cfd application. I can get the contourf and surf plots to work nicely, but as soon as i add the colorbar, the axes of the plot get REALLY small, and basically disappears! I have seen that there is a handle for the axes, but I have failed to be able to use it... COLORBAR('peer',AX) creates a colorbar associated with axes AX instead of the current axes.

   surf(xp(2:nXp-1,2:nYp-1),yp(2:nXp-1,2:nYp- 1),(uplotloc.^2+vplotloc.^2),'FaceAlpha',0.6)
   axis([0 w 0 h])
   axsurf = [0 w 0 h];
   shading flat;
   title('Velocity field')
   %hold on
   colorbar('peer',axsurf)

Also, I would ideally like both the quiver plot AND the surf plot to be overlayed onto eachother... but it seems that all of the surf plots just keep piling up on eachother and the transparency (to see quiver) is lost!

I would like to show you the plots, but I am not sure how to use the "image" icon on this forum... because i would like the axes on other plots that i have to get larger as the iteration continues... i.e. i am monitoring residuals, and as they decrease to below say, 1e-3... the plot does not adjust, even though i have set the limits to plus and minus inifinity... is there a way to plot in log maybe?

I'd appreciate any assitance!

Best Regards, Michael

Also, is there a good place to find out how to use LaTeX to make nice plots

[Tom]

Are you plotting in a for loop?

And this should help for Tex stuff: http://www.mathworks.co.uk/help/techdoc/creating_plots/f0-4741.html