Programmatically Flip/Rotate Simulink Block

Hi,

I'd like to programmatically rotate/flip a simulink block - arbitrarily. Unfortunately, the 'orientation' property

seems to support specific orientations, only. Thus, no combination of e.g. 'y-mirror' and 90° clockwise rotation

seems to be possible.

Certainly, Simulink supports that via the 'Format' menue but I did not find an accessible block property for this.

Is there a way to access the 'Format/Flip Block' menu of Simulink via Matlab? I did not find a matching property in the slx model, but maybe I overlooked a possibility. Also, I was not able to send key commands to Simulink.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks in advance!

Answer 1

[Timo Dietz]

I finally made it with the help of:

How do I send keystrokes from MATLAB to another application that was invoked using the bang(!) operator? - MATLAB Answers - MATLAB Central (mathworks.com)

I activate Simulink, select the block to be manipulated and then send kesytrokes for rotating and flipping it.

Not he most elegant approach but it works for me.

Have a nice day!

[Philip Hackett]

Hi,

Can you give the commands you used to send keystrokes to the Simulink model?

The code in the link uses 'h.SendKeys()' where h is defined by an actxserver() command, but model.SendKeys() does not work where model is a Simulink model:

Dot indexing is not supported for variables of this type.

Thanks

[Philip Hackett]

In fact it works with an open Simulink window, as in the linked example:

% where the block to be rotated is selected in the GUI

h = actxserver('WScript.Shell');
h.AppActivate('Simulink');
h.SendKeys('^r');

But the block to be rotated must be selected by a mouse click, so it is not a programmatic method that can be used to arrange a model without manual intervention. Setting gcb to the block of interest, as in this answer:

set_param(model, 'CurrentBlock', 'blockName');

does not have the same effect as clicking the block in the GUI.

[Timo Dietz]

What I'm actually doing is the following:

actX = actxserver('WScript.Shell');

newBlock = add_block([libraryBlock], [modelName], 'MakeNameUnique','on');
blockObj = get_param(newBlock, 'Object');
blockObj.Selected = 'on';

Now, the block is selected and its orientation can be changed w/o manual intervention, using ACTX as well as blockObj.Orientation:

blockObj.Orientation = 'up';
actX.AppActivate('Simulink'); % focus on Simulink
actX.SendKeys('^i'); % flip vertically 

Answer 2

[Jean Matthieu]

Hi

set_param(gcb, 'Orientation', 'left')

--> Other keywords are up, right, down

Is that what you're looking for?

[Timo Dietz]

Thanks for your answer. Unfortunately, these orientation properties do not suffice since they do not cover all possible variations of rotating and mirroring.

Answer 3

[Liam Tanner]

Hi,

a solution to this problem would be:

newBlock= add_block([libraryBlock], [modelName], 'MakeNameUnique', 'on', 'Position', pos);
set_param(newBlock, 'Orientation', 'down') % Orientation
set_param(newBlock, 'BlockMirror', 'on') % invert
set_param(newBlock, 'BlockRotation', 90) % rotate

I hope it helps ;)