Help with GUI Layout toolbox

Hello,

I am trying to add a legend to the dockexample as shown below (from the GUI layout toolbox). But when I do this, the plot gets erased and I can only see the legend notations on the axes. How do I plot and add a legend.

I believe since the parent of the axes is the panel, the legend is not a child of the axes.

Not sure how to fix this.

Please see the code below

function dockexample() 
%DOCKEXAMPLE: An example of using the panelbox dock/undock functionality

% Copyright 2009-2013 The MathWorks Ltd.

% Create the window and main layout 
fig = figure() 
box = uix.HBox( 'Parent', fig );

uicontrol( 'Style', 'listbox', 'Parent', box, 'String', {'Item 1','Item 2'} );

% Add three panels to the box 
panel{1} = uix.BoxPanel( 'Title', 'Panel 1', 'Parent', box ); 
panel{2} = uix.BoxPanel( 'Title', 'Panel 2', 'Parent', box ); 
panel{3} = uix.BoxPanel( 'Title', 'Panel 3', 'Parent', box );

% Add some contents 
uicontrol( 'Style', 'PushButton', 'String', 'Button 1', 'Parent', panel{1} ); 
uicontrol( 'Style', 'PushButton', 'String', 'Button 2', 'Parent', panel{2} ); 
box1 = uix.VBox( 'Parent', panel{3} ); 
box2 = uix.HBox( 'Parent', box1 ); 
uicontrol( 'Style', 'PushButton', 'String', 'Button 3', 'Parent', box1 ); 
uicontrol( 'Style', 'PushButton', 'String', 'Button 4', 'Parent', box2 ); 
uicontrol( 'Style', 'PushButton', 'String', 'Button 5', 'Parent', box2 );

% Set the dock/undock callback 
set( panel{1}, 'DockFcn', {@nDock, 1} ); 
set( panel{2}, 'DockFcn', {@nDock, 2} ); 
set( panel{3}, 'DockFcn', {@nDock, 3} );

axes1 = axes( 'Parent', panel{1}) 
theta = 0:360; 
plot(axes1,theta, sind(theta), theta, cosd(theta)) 
legend('sin','cos')

%-------------------------------------------------------------------------% 
function nDock( eventSource, eventData, whichpanel ) %#ok<INUSL> 
% Set the flag 
panel{whichpanel}.Docked = ~panel{whichpanel}.Docked; 
if panel{whichpanel}.Docked 
% Put it back into the layout 
newfig = get( panel{whichpanel}, 'Parent' ); 
set( panel{whichpanel}, 'Parent', box ); 
delete( newfig ); 
else 
% Take it out of the layout 
pos = getpixelposition( panel{whichpanel} ); 
newfig = figure( ... 
'Name', get( panel{whichpanel}, 'Title' ), ... 
'NumberTitle', 'off', ... 
'MenuBar', 'none', ... 
'Toolbar', 'none', ... 
'CloseRequestFcn', {@nDock, whichpanel} ); 
figpos = get( newfig, 'Position' ); 
set( newfig, 'Position', [figpos(1,1:2), pos(1,3:4)] ); 
set( panel{whichpanel}, 'Parent', newfig, ... 
'Units', 'Normalized', ... 
'Position', [0 0 1 1] ); 
end 
end % nDock

%-------------------------------------------------------------------------% 
function nCloseAll( ~, ~ ) 
% User wished to close the application, so we need to tidy up 

% Delete all windows, including undocked ones. We can do this by 
% getting the window for each panel in turn and deleting it. 
for ii=1:numel( panel ) 
if isvalid( panel{ii} ) && ~strcmpi( panel{ii}.BeingDeleted, 'on' ) 
figh = ancestor( panel{ii}, 'figure' ); 
delete( figh ); 
end 
end 

end % nCloseAll

end % Main function

[Walter Roberson]

Try

legend(axes1, {'sin','cos'})

[Sankar Mahadevan]

Hi Walter, that doesn't work. I tried doing that.

Answer 1

[Mohammad Askari]

Method 1.

As explained in the documentation, one way of doing it is to create a uicontainer parent for the axes to enable correct legend/colorbar behavior.

Adding Colorbars and Legends to GUI Layout Toolbox

So simply change the axes creation line to the following:

axes1 = axes('Parent', uicontainer('Parent', panel{1}))

Method 2.

While this should work perfectly fine for most cases, you may not like the slight (not easily noticeable) shifting of the axes' position. I personally needed to come up with another solution for my own GUI due to my obsession with perfect positioning and alignment. This is not as neat as the above method, but it does the job and no longer needs to deal with the positioning of a uicontainer object which can get tricky in some cases.

You should first create a VBox or HBox container parent for your axes only. Then create the axes, add the legend, and set the Widths of the HBox or (Heights of the VBox) to [-1 0]. Finally, update your legend handle location value to your liking. I observed that resizing the figure (HBox/VBox axes container) resets the location of the legend object for some unknown reason. So I fixed this by adding a SizeChangedFcn callback to the container to fix this.

In short, you can achieve this by replacing your axes creation lines of your code with the following lines:

axesContainer = uix.HBox('Parent',panel{1},'SizeChangedFcn',{@GUIAxesLegendFix;'northeast'});
axes1 = axes('Parent', axesContainer);
theta = 0:360; 
plot(axes1,theta, sind(theta), theta, cosd(theta)) 
LegendHandle = legend('sin','cos');
axesContainer.Widths = [-1 0];
LegendHandle.Location = 'northeast';

and add this callback function to the end of your code

function GUIAxesLegendFix(Handle,~,LegendLocation)
try Handle.Contents(2).Location = LegendLocation; catch, end
end

I just added a try, catch to the callback to prevent giving any error during resizing if you decide to add a legend to the container later manually. I also attached an updated version of your sample code with the method 2 solution. I suggest you try the more straightforward approach in the documentation and if you do not like the result, try the 2nd method.