tiledlayout doesn't work with uifigure?

Hi, I just encountered a strange behaviour. I recently programmed a script witch uses a tiledlayout within an uifigure. It worked well so far until today, when Matlab refuses to apply the tiledlayout onto the already opened uifigure but instead opens a separate figure.

fig = uifigure;

tiledlayout(1, 2);
nexttile(1)
plot(0)
nexttile(2)
plot(0)

That's a demoscript witch provokes the described behaviour. As soon as tiledlayout gets called a new figure opens and the uifigure is ignored. I wrote my script in Matlab R2019b but also upgraded to a fresh R2020a today. Same behaviour. I can't tell why it worked well so far but suddenly started to behave strangely as of today. Any clues?

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

Explicitly specify the handles of graphic objects

fig = uifigure;
t = tiledlayout(fig, 1, 2);
ax = nexttile(t);
plot(ax, 0)
ax = nexttile(t);
plot(ax, 0)

[powl]

Well I'm just trying around and I think I could succeed with that. But why did Matlab change it's whole behaviour out of a sudden? My script was working perfectly fine until today, when It just refused to reuse the already opened active uifigure.

[Ameer Hamza]

I am not sure why Mathworks suddenly changed this behavior? Have you installed the latest update released recently for R2020a?

[powl]

Well, the script worked fine, I went to sleep, I stood up, I restarted the script, then it changed the behaviour, haha.

Matlab doesn't perform auto updates, right? Maybe something in my whole system changed. Maybe it was just a "bug" that my old script worked so far.

[Ameer Hamza]

Yes, MATLAB does not update automatically. Maybe It was making a normal figure instead of uifigure, but you didn't notice it before.

[powl]

I certainly noticed that it created a uifigure ;-). A uifigure looks different as there's no toolbar in it. Also now when I call the old script, I creates a uifiure and a figure. That's why I'm wondering what's going wrong now.

[powl]

ok next problem:

t = nexttile(l, [5 2]);
pax = polaraxes(t);
p2 = polarplot(pax, rho, current);

the normal plots look fine now, but as soon as it reaches the polar axes I get an error

Error using polaraxes

Too many output arguments.

I couldn't work my way arount it. Any suggestions?

[Ameer Hamza]

Were you able to draw the polaraxes over a tile before without using the axes handles? What was the code?

[powl]

Well, I didn't need to use polaraxes in the first place. I Just called polarplot and it worked. Here is the original code that created my window in a simplified form:

fig = uifigure;

ldbtn = uibutton(fig);
ldbtn.Position = [360 30 60 22];
ldbtn.Text = 'Rnd';

svbtn = uibutton(fig);
svbtn.Position = [440 30 60 22];
svbtn.Text = 'Save';

rho = linspace(0, 2*pi, n);
axx = [1 n -0.3 0.3];

tiledlayout(5, 3);

nexttile(1)
p11 = plot(sin1);
p11.YDataSource = 'sin1';
t11 = title('');
axis(axx);

nexttile(4)
p12 = plot(sin2);
p12.YDataSource = 'sin2';
t12 = title('');
axis(axx);

nexttile(7)
p13 = plot(sin3);
p13.YDataSource = 'sin3';
t13 = title('');
axis(axx);

nexttile(10)
p14 = plot(sin4);
p14.YDataSource = 'sin4';
t14 = title('');
axis(axx);

nexttile(13)
p13 = plot(current_flip);
p13.YDataSource = 'current_flip';
title('sum');
axis(axx);

nexttile([5 2])
p2 = polarplot(rho, current);

axis([1 361 -1 1]);
p2.YDataSource = 'current';

After 'the incident' happened, literally every single ui instruction I don't give a reference to the already opened uifigure tries to open its own figure. That wasn't the case before. It used to look like this:

[Ameer Hamza]

It is quite strange that you were able to make such a thing in uifigure yesterday. I tried to make polaraxes over the tiledlayout, and it is proving to be quite difficult. The following code shows a workaround. Maybe you can file a bug report (not sure, if it is a bug or intended behavior ?) or at least a feature request to make the process of creating polaraxes over tiledlayout in uifigure a bit easier.

fig = uifigure;

ldbtn = uibutton(fig);
ldbtn.Position = [360 30 60 22];
ldbtn.Text = 'Rnd';

svbtn = uibutton(fig);
svbtn.Position = [440 30 60 22];
svbtn.Text = 'Save';

n=100;
rho = linspace(0, 2*pi, n);
axx = [1 n -0.3 0.3];

t = tiledlayout(fig, 5, 3);

ax = nexttile(t,1);
p11 = plot(ax, 0);
p11.YDataSource = 'sin1';
t11 = title(ax,'');
axis(ax,axx);

ax = nexttile(t,4);
p12 = plot(ax, 0);
p12.YDataSource = 'sin2';
t12 = title(ax,'');
axis(ax,axx);

ax = nexttile(t,7);
p13 = plot(ax, 0);
p13.YDataSource = 'sin3';
t13 = title(ax,'');
axis(ax,axx);

ax = nexttile(t,10);
p14 = plot(ax,0);
p14.YDataSource = 'sin4';
t14 = title(ax,'');
axis(ax,axx);

ax = nexttile(t,13);
p13 = plot(ax,0);
p13.YDataSource = 'current_flip';
title(ax,'sum');
axis(ax,axx);

ax = nexttile(t,[5 2]);
ax.Visible = 'off';
pax = polaraxes(fig);
pax.Position = ax.Position;
p2 = polarplot(pax,1, 1);
axis(ax,[1 361 -1 1]);
p2.YDataSource = 'current';

Answer 2

[Paul Hamacher]

Thank you for you effort! I think the problem arises from the fact, that I try to combine "old" (GUIDE, figure) and "new" (appDesigner, uifigure) GUI elements together in the first place. I think tiledlayout isn't inteded to work with uifigure. I can't tell why it worked at first and then suddenly stopped working. ?

I will try to re-implement my GUI with only new GUI elements (uigridlayout instead of tiledlayout...). Maybe this is easier. This was the first time I worked with gui elements. Compared to other programming environments, GUI programming seems a bit hard to me in Matlab.

[Ameer Hamza]

Yes, making older graphical elements to work with the uifigure can be a bit of pain. You can try to use uigridlayout since it was specifically made for uifigure. The only thing I find confusing is why it was working before since you didn't even update MATLAB, so there shouldn't be any major changes. I don't think there is a physical explanation for this. Something supernatural must be going on with your system :D

[Paul Hamacher]

I couldn't give a better explanation for this behaviour! ?