How do you set the focus to a specific uiaxes

I am designing an app with the new App Designer format and would like to be able to set the focus of my uifigure to draw on a specific set of uiaxes when I activate a particular callback.

When I attempt to target the axis for plotting using

axes(app.UIAxes)

I get the following error:

Error using axes
Functionality not supported with figures created with the uifigure function.

And calling:

uiaxes(app.UIAxes)

yields:

Error using uiaxes (line 32)
UIAxes cannot be a child of UIAxes.

Is it possible to set the current axes/panel of a uifigure object via their handle? How do I go back add a plot to uiaxes after having created them and subsequently edited other components on the uifigure?

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

I would recommend using the plot(ax,___) syntax.

" plot(ax,___) creates the line in the axes specified by ax instead of in the current axes (gca). The option ax can precede any of the input argument combinations in the previous syntaxes."

What I typically do is create a startup function that generates the initial plot

function startupFcn(app)
   ...
   app.p1 = plot(app.UIAxes,x,y1)
   ...
end

Then, when I want to update my line, my app just updates the XData and YData properties of app.p1

% Update line
app.p1.XData = x_new;
app.p1.YData = y1_new;

Of course, this all depends on what type of plot you want to create.

BTW, startup function is a callback of the app canvas. See this page for how to add/create it.

[James Kirk]

Thank you for this solution!

[zhehao.nkd]

Great solution ! But what if I am not using plot, instead I am using spectogram, imshow or whatever self-defined functions without (ax,___) syntax?

[Cris LaPierre]

Check the documentation for that function to see if there is a 'Parent' name-value pair. If there is, use that syntax. You might also need to check the properites of the graphics object to see what the equivalent XData and YData properties are.

Here's a link for imshow.

imshow('peppers.png','Parent',app.UIAxes);

[Matt J]

Unfortunately, some 3rd party code from before the days of appdesigner do not support an "ax" input. Are we really forced to rewrite the 3rd party code? Is there really no equivalent to axes(ax) for forcing a uiaxes into focus?

[Sylvia Ludwig]

+1