How can I apply the format parameters of an existing figure to new figures?

Hi everyone I have a Figure that I spent a lot of time customising the colors, widths, etc, all from the Plot Tools GUI. I then have a script that generates figures, and I would like to be able to apply the formatting of my customised figure to the newly-generated figures. I tried two things:

1) Generate M-file from my customised figure, then create the new figures using that code. However, that gives some errors when passing the data parameters; the data is in a rather complex format so I'd rather not have to debug these errors

2) (what I thought would be easier) I opened my customised figure and did Export Setup, and saved as a new style, which I then loaded into a new figure. However, no changes were made to the style of the new figure.

Can anyone help? Many thanks!

[AwedBy Matlab]

Just wondering if this question is perhaps not in the right place, or not clear enough? Seems strange that I am getting no replies even though it's been posted for a while now. In the past I used to get replies within a few hours... Thanks for any clarification!

[Asieh Daneshi]

That is easy! when you did all the changes, using"file> generate code" you can obtain the code that makes your figure. then you can use it to make other figures.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

You can use a "cell" array containing the names of the properties of interest and then use the "set" and "get" functions to apply from "f1" to "f2". Please find a code sample below demonstrating this workflow:

% Create f1 figure
f1 = figure;
f1.WindowStyle = 'docked';
f1.Color = 'r';

% Now, we want to apply the same "WindowStyle" and "Color" from f1 to f2. We can do so using "cell" arrays and "get" and "set functions:

% Create a cell array of Properties you'd like to be consistent between f1 and f2.
desiredPropsToTransfer = {'WindowStyle', 'Color'};

% get the desired values from f1
desiredValuesToTransfer = get(f1, desiredPropsToTransfer);

% now apply the values to f2
set(f2, desiredPropsToTransfer , desiredValuesToTransfer);

To find additional information regarding the "set" command, you can consult the documentation page below:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/set.html

To find additional information regarding the "get" command, you can consult the documentation page below:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/get.html

To find additional information regarding "cell" arrays, you can consult the documentation page below: 

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/cell-arrays.html

Answer 2

[Matt J]

I guess something like the following might do it,

   S=get(firstFigure);

   set(newFigure,S);

[AwedBy Matlab]

Thanks! I tried the following but it resulted in an error so maybe didnt understand exactly how to apply your solution

% click in fig 1 (the one that I want to duplicate the formatting of)
h1=gcf
% click in fig 2 (the one that I want to apply the formatting of fig1 to)
h2=gcf
set(h2,h1)

The following also gave an error

h1=get(gcf)
h2=get(gcf)
set(h2,h1)

[Matt J]

I meant this,

 figprops=get(gcf); %click source figure
 set(gcf,figprops); %click target figure

[AwedBy Matlab]

Thanks, but after selecting the target figure and typing

set(gcf,figprops)

I get the error:

??? Error using ==> set
Attempt to modify a property that is read-only.
Object Name :  figure
Property Name :  'BeingDeleted'.

[Matt J]

OK, forget it then.

As opposed to using Export Setup, couldn't you just save the figure as template.fig. Then re-open a copy of template.fig and plot new data into it?

[AwedBy Matlab]

Hi Matt, Sorry for the late reply - for some reason I am not notified of new answers to my post. I tried that, however it seems that giving a plot command when a Figure is already opened (and formatted in a certain way) resets the formatting of the figure to defaults, even though it is the existing Figure window that is being used. Surely there has to be a way to reuse figure formatting for new figures, it seems like such a simple task!...

[Matt J]

I think you may be confusing figure properties with axes properties. I don't think figure properties would get overwritten, or at least that's not my experience. For example, when I generate and save a figure with no toolbar as follows,

 >> figure; set(gcf,'Toolbar','none'); saveas(gcf,'figtemplate')

re-opening and plotting into it does not restore the toolbar.

 >> openfig figtemplate; plot(1:7)

Axes properties are a different matter, and will get overwritten. That's true even of figures/axes not loaded from a .fig file. You want this to be the default behavior, because normally, the best choice of axes properties are dependent on the data being plotted. However, you can freeze the axes properties using HOLD ON, if you're sure that makes sense for you.

[Matt J]

You can also freeze axes properties by doing

 set(gca,'NextPlot','add');

This is the same as if HOLD ON were applied, except that you can now save the figure and its axes children in this state. When you reload it, you can plot into the axes without erasing titles, axis labels, etc...

[AwedBy Matlab]

Sorry, it may be that I am a bit confused. The kind of 'formatting' I was trying to re-use for future graphs were things like marker colour, font&size of axes' labels, legend position etc. Are these figure properties or axes properties, and can they be applied together as a 'style' (as in e.g. Word) when a new figure is created?

Thanks again for your help!!

[Matt J]

 >> docsearch Axes Properties

will lead you to a list of axes properties and similarly for figure properties. Marker color is a line property. Namely, the actual line objects that you place on axes using plotting commands are children of that axes and have their own properties. Each new line you add to a plot must have its individual properties set, either when created or post-modified. AFAIK, there is no axes property that will force all its child lines to have a certain color, marker type, etc...

Answer 3

[Sean de Wolski]

Use copyobj()

h = figure('color','r','name','Tuesday');
copyobj(h,0) % copy figure to root