Re-use the view output matrix in Matlab - matlab

In Matlab, I create a fairly complicated 3D plot, then manipulate the view option by hand up to a point where I am happy with what I see (below). How can I reuse the parameters of the final view? I can get the output of the view command which is a 4 by 4 matrix, but the latter does not seem to be reusable?

In order to get something out of view that you can then pass to view to reconstruct the viewpoint, you need to specify two outputs to view which will yield the current azimuth and elevation.
[az, el] = view(ax1);
You can then pass these to view on a different (or the same) axes to specify the viewpoint
view(ax2, az, el);
You can also use the View property of the axes object.
AzEl = get(ax1, 'View');
set(ax2, 'View', AzEl);
Note, however, that there are many properties which control the view of an axes including the Projection, the DataAspectRatio, the PlotBoxAspectRatio and all of the camera properties. Depending on your use case, you may need to specify these as well.

ok, based on Suever's comments, I realized that all the figure properties I need can be accessed through the Graphical Interface called matlab.graphics.axis.Axes. This is where the parameters of the camera can be found. Another approach is to find them one by one as follows:
get(gca,'Projection')
get(gca,'CameraPosition')
get(gca,'CameraViewAngle')
get(gca,'CameraTarget')
and then set them directly in the script:
set(gca,'Projection','perspective')
set(gca,'CameraPosition',[-7 -5 3]/15)
set(gca,'CameraViewAngle',85)
set(gca,'CameraTarget',[0 .5 0])
I originally thought the view command would provide this information at once.

Related

Communication between two or more GUIs

I've a GUI(i.e. lets call it 'First')through which i can choose to open other GUIs(let's call them 'Second' and 'Third').I want to put a 'pushbutton' on the 'First'GUI that allows me to manipulate the figure on the different axes of the 'Second' and 'Third' GUIs. So, i choose with the 'First'GUI if use either 'Second' or 'Third' GUI; once i've chosen that i start to work just with the GUI that i chose (so the Third one or Second ones). Now i want to have a pushbutton not on each GUIs (Second or Third) but only on the First one in order to manipulate the figure on the axes 1 of the Second or Third (depends on which one i've previously chosen). Furthermore this pushbutton that i want is optional and i need to refresh my axes after used that.
I've done my best to explain the situation,please if you know any solution help me out!!Thanks
Your question is similar to other examples, such as this.
To understand how to solve your problem, you need to remember that MATLAB "decides" which axes to update based on the axes handle provided by the user. If the user doesn't provide a handle, a default gca (the current axes) is used. The axes that gca points to, is the first child of type 'axes' of the figure, that is, the first entry in findobj(hFigure,'Type','axes'). You can read about setting the current axes here.
Having established that, the solution you are looking for would involve storing the axes handles somewhere, and retrieving the correct one when you are about to update a plot. A common place to store it is the "application-defined data" (appdata), accessible by setappdata and getappdata, as mentioned in the first link above and also here.
The procedure you should undergo is:
Upon creating a figure, store the axes handle in appdata by calling setappdata(0,name,val) (e.g. setappdata(0,'axTag1',handles.axTag1)) from your GUI initialization function. The value 0 for the 1st argument stores it in MATLAB's root object (you can think of it as the main MATLAB window), so that even if any of the figures is closed, the information is maintained as long as MATLAB is still open.
Whenever you want to modify an axes, just obtain the appropriate handle using value = getappdata(0,name) and use it to update the corresponding axes.

removing units from plot

I try to remove the Matlab-given units from this plot but I don't find a way:
figure(1)
hold on
set(gcf,'PaperUnits','centimeters',...
'PaperSize',[15 9],...
'PaperPosition',[0 0 15 9]);
pzmap(LB); sgrid; grid on; axis equal;
title('');
xlabel('\sigma [rad/s]')
ylabel('\omega [rad/s]')
hold off
After that commands the xlabel looks like this: \sigma [rad/s] (seconds^-1). The seconds comes with pzmap. How can I remove them?
I found, some strange behavour:
If generate code by the figure plot manager I get this:
% Create xlabel
xlabel('\sigma [rad/s] (seconds^{-1})','Units','pixels');
Why???
Now I get it - without pzmap/pzplot
pol = pole(sys)
figure(1)
plot(real(pol(:)),imag(pol(:)),'x')
title('');
xlabel('\sigma [rad/s]');
ylabel('\omega [rad/s]');
sgrid
pzmap is a high-level convenience function, but it's not the best choice for this (it's also stored in a folder of obsolete functions in R2013a, so it may get marked for official removal in the future). Instead, let's create an example plot using pzplot directly instead of pzmap. This is still a plot function that does a lot under the hood, but it returns a handle, h, to the plot:
sys = rss(3,2,2);
h = pzplot(sys);
sgrid;
axis equal;
We can via the options of a pzplot with getoptions:
p = getoptions(h)
To set the labels and units as you desire, you might try this, using setoptions:
p.Title.String = '';
p.XLabel.String = '\sigma';
p.YLabel.String = '\omega';
setoptions(h,p);
I believe that the units of 'seconds-1' that the plot displays is equivalent to the 'rad/s' that you want to specify. I know that the two look is very different (I prefer being specific about radians myself), but that's a disadvantage of using such a plot function that tries to do everything for you. If you wanted to remove the default string or add another option, you'd likely have to do some low level hacking. An easier way around, might be to use the "Generate Code..." command ("Generate M-File..." in older versions") under the "File" menu in the figure's toolbar and edit the plot labels there (there's also a programmatic option for this on the File Exchange). Or you could output to postscript and edit that.
Alternatively, you can use pzoptions to create a list of options to pass to pzplot or pzmap (undocumented in the latter case):
p = pzoptions;
p.Title.String = '';
p.XLabel.String = '\sigma';
p.YLabel.String = '\omega';
sys = rss(3,2,2);
pzplot(sys,p);
sgrid;
axis equal;
You'll see that that for some reason the text size is much smaller in this case. pzplot and pzmap must set the font size to 10 themselves. You could easily do this.
Fore more on customizing this and related Control toolbox plots, see this article.
After intense low-level digging, there is actually a pretty simple way to override the default behavior.
p = pzplot(sys);
p.AxesGrid.XUnits = 'rad/s';
p.AxesGrid.YUnits = 'rad/s';
Changes appear to take effect immediately. I have even tried setting the value to nothing, i.e.
p.AxesGrid.XUnits = '';
and it effectively removes the annoying parenthesis with the units. Technically, matlab creates a custom-class element they store under the name AxesGrid in the resppack.mpzplot class instance, with some standard LTI-behavior. You can probably work around some stuff by "injecting" a script with the same name as one of the standard library functions, so that it will be called instead, and change things in there, but this is the closest I have come to removing those annoying units in a few lines.
As a side info, the AxesGrid object is initialized in
...\controllib\graphics\#resppack\#pzplot\initialize.m
should you want to check it out.

Matlab: linkaxes squeezes my graph

I have drown several graphs thanks to "subplot" function on MatLab and it works well.
Nevertheless, I want all my graphs to have the same Y-scale so that I can compare them.
I used the "linkaxes" function and my all my graphs have the same scale but the problem is that some of my figures are "beheaded", lacking their upper part, or one of my figures is completely squeezed.
I don't get what happened. Could you please help me to solve the problem or tell me about another function that would be more appropriate in my case?
Here's part of my code:
for i=1:1:9
m=n(i);
fichier=sprintf('%d.txt',m);
M=load(fichier);
z=length(M(:,1));
x=M(1:z,1);
y=M(1:z,2);
a(i)=subplot(2,4,i)
contour3=plot(x,y)
linkaxes(a,'y')
end
linkaxes creates a permanent link between the scales of several axes, so that you can subsequently perform zoom operations (perhaps interactively) on one, and have the other automatically update.
If you need that functionality, then linkaxes is the right command (although you could possibly also look at linkprops).
However if all you need is to ensure that the y-axis limits of your axes are the same, it will probably be easier (and you will have more control) if you set them directly. You can retrieve the y-axis limits using ylim(axis_handle) and set them using ylim(axis_handle, [lower, upper]), or alternatively with get(axis_handle,'YLim') and set(axis_handle,'YLim',[lower,upper]). You might also look at the YLimMode property of the axis, which determines whether the axis limits are directly set or automatically resized.

Change label of data tips on bode nichols diagram

When we plot a bode/nichols locus, the name of workspace variable is used
tmp=ss(1,1,1,0);
nichols(tmp);
will use 'tmp' as label.
When using more complex data, matlab is using 'untitled1','untitled2',...
tmp={ss(1,1,1,0) , ss(1.2,1,1,0)};
nichols(tmp{:});
How can I change this label programmatically?
Ideally, I'd like a solution working with Matlab 6.5.1, but I'm also interested in solutions restricted to newer versions.
You can modify the labels programmatically via their graphics handles. It looks like the values you want to change are the DisplayName property of some of the children of the current axis. So in your first example, I can change the display name like this:
ch = get(gca,'Children');
set(ch(1),'DisplayName','Fred');
In general, I'm not sure how to predict which children of the current axis are the ones you need to change. For the second example you give, the two curves appear to be the second and third children when I run your code.

Does Matlab execute a callback when a plot is zoomed/resized/redrawn?

In Matlab, I would like to update the data plotted in a set of axes when the user zooms into the plot window. For example, suppose I want to plot a particular function that is defined analytically. I would like to update the plot window with additional data when the user zooms into the traces, so that they can examine the function with arbitrary resolution.
Does Matlab provide hooks to update the data when the view changes? (Or simply when it is redrawn?)
While I have yet to find one generic "redraw" callback to solve this question, I have managed to cobble together a group of four callbacks* that seem to achieve this goal in (almost?) all situations. For a given axes object ax = gca(),
1. Setup the zoom callback function as directed by #Jonas:
set(zoom(ax),'ActionPostCallback',#(x,y) myCallbackFcn(ax));
2. Setup a pan callback function:
set(pan(ax),'ActionPostCallback',#(x,y) myCallbackFcn(ax));
3. Setup a figure resize callback function:
set(getParentFigure(ax),'ResizeFcn',#(x,y) myCallbackFcn(ax));
4. Edit: this one no longer works in R2014b, but is only needed if you add, e.g., a colorbar to the figure (which changes the axis position without changing the figure size or axis zoom/pan). I've not looked for a replacement. Finally, setup an undocumented property listener for the axes position property itself. There is one important trick here: We must hold onto the handle to the handle.listener object as once it's deleted (or leaves scope), it removes the callback. The UserData property of the axes object itself is a nice place to stash it in many cases.
hax = handle(ax);
hprop = findprop(hax,'Position');
h = handle.listener(hax,hprop,'PropertyPostSet',#(x,y) myCallbackFcn(ax));
set(ax,'UserData',h);
In all these cases I've chosen to discard the default callback event arguments and instead capture the axis in question within an anonymous function. I've found this to be much more useful than trying to cope with all the different forms of arguments that propagate through these disparate callback scenarios.
*Also, with so many different callback sources flying around, I find it invaluable to have a recursion check at the beginning of myCallbackFcn to ensure that I don't end up in an infinite loop.
Yes, it does. The ZOOM mode object has the following callbacks:
ButtonDownFilter
ActionPreCallback
ActionPostCallback
The latter two are executed either just before or just after the zoom function. You could set your update function in ActionPostCallback, where you'd update the plot according to the new axes limits (the handle to the axes is passed as the second input argument to the callback).