Figures :: Programming GUIs (Creating Graphical User Interfaces)

Creating Graphical User Interfaces

Figures

Figures are the windows that contain the GUIs you design with the Layout Editor. See the Figure Properties reference page for information on what figure characteristics you can control.

Displaying Plots in a Separate Figure

To prevent a figure from becoming the target of plotting commands issued at the command line or by other GUIs, you can set the HandleVisibility and IntegerHandle properties to off. However, this means the figure is also hidden from plotting commands issued by your GUI. To issue plotting commands from your GUI,

Create a figure and axes.
Save the handle of the figure in the handles structure.
Create an axes, save its handle, and set its Parent property to the figure handle.
Create the plot, save the handles, and set their Parent properties to the handle of the axes.

The following code illustrates these steps:

fHandle = 
figure('HandleVisibility','off','IntegerHandle','off',...
    'Visible','off');
aHandle = axes('Parent',fHandle);
pHandles = plot(PlotData,'Parent',aHandle);
set(fHandle,'Visible','on')

Note that not all plotting commands accept property name/property value specifications as arguments. Consult the reference page for the specific command to see what arguments you can specify.

ActiveX Controls Managing GUI Data with the Handles Structure