Beyond the Basics - Basics of MATLAB and Beyond - page 115

Example: findobj
The findobj command is used to search through the graphical hierarchy
for objects that satisfy particular property values. For example, generate
a sphere, a cylinder, and a cone:
subplot(131)
sphere
axis equal
ax = axis;
subplot(132)
cylinder
axis equal
axis(ax)
subplot(133)
cylinder([1 0])
axis equal
axis(ax)
The three shapes are represented by three surface objects within three
axes objects. To get the surface handles by getting the children of the
three axes you would need to type three calls to get ; one for each of the
axes:
axes_handles = get(gcf,'children');
surf_handle(1) = get(axes_handles(1),'children');
surf_handle(2) = get(axes_handles(2),'children');
surf_handle(3) = get(axes_handles(3),'children');
But an easier way to get the surface handles is to use the findobj
command. Here we use it to find all the objects in the current figure
whose type property has the value surface :
surf_handle = findobj(gcf,'type','surface');
We can now work with the vector of surface handles to alter all the
surfaces at once. Let us make them transparent:
set(surf_handle,'FaceColor','none')