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I have created several figures in Matlab (using GUIDE) which act as a config-GUI for a model. The idea is that changes made in figure F1 should affect what choices can be made in figure F2, F3, .... However, there are 5 figures, all holding different information, and it is possible to navigate arbitrarily between the figures (push buttons on each figure, to every other figure).

A large issue is that I want only one figure to be open at any point in time. That is, when F1 has started FX, I want F1 to close. Hence, I think it is unsuitable to use global variables. (?)

My issue is that I am simply not capable of holding all the data up to date. Maybe this could be achieved using appdata or guidata, but I cannot wrap my head around it.

Examples:

  1. Since the handles of F1 and F2 differs, passing F1.handles to F2 works (F1.handles shows up in varargin{1} in F2), but I cannot concatenate F1.handles with F2.handles. Hence, I have no apt way of sending F1.handles and F2.handles to F3 (or any other figure). (If this can be achieved in a more simple way, I might be okay with dropping the "arbitrarily navigation feature", but so far I have not been able to make it work.)

  2. Using .mat-files (i.e., write FX.handles to a file and load each file in each Figure) seems such bad practice that I haven't even given it a serious go.

So far, I have not found it necessary to change the data in FN±X from FN, hence I guess the .mat-file approach could work, but my latest idea is using Matlab OOP and pass around a class instead of the handles. I found an old post on the topic (Global (shared) variables in Matlab GUI code behind. Is there better way to do it then using handles structure?) but it links merely to a File Exchange and I am unable to understand how to make it applicable for my use case.

Edit 1: I found this Using GUIDE with object-oriented MATLAB?, and will give it a try, but I am still having a hard time understanding exactly how to use it, since it seems to require using handles anyway.

Community
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GLaDER
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  • Not an answer, just a suggestion for workaround: If no 2 figures `Fx`/`Fy` would be open at the same time, you could place all your figure components in `panel`s, and keep only one figure. When you change the settings page, you just hide the old panel and display the new one. – Hoki Dec 02 '16 at 13:53
  • Are each of your "F" GUIs separate GUIs or is it multiple instances of the same GUI? You could use the `'tag'` property combined with `findall` to locate the other windows and then use `guidata(hfig)` to get their respective `handles` struct. – Suever Dec 02 '16 at 17:25
  • @Hoki: Hm. Haven't heard of this "panel" thing, I'll look into it. – GLaDER Dec 04 '16 at 15:58
  • @Suever: They are separate GUIs. – GLaDER Dec 04 '16 at 15:58

1 Answers1

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U can try using global variables to retrieve handles for all the figures created by assigning handles values to a global variable in a structure format. Global variable persists in memory until you close the figures.

Mohamed Jahirsha
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