Import figures to MATLAB GUI using handles?

Question

How can I literally take these figures and place them in the axes windows of my GUI?

I am not sure where to place handles in my user-defined code in the example below. I have 4 figures in total which look similar to this example. I want the 4 figures to be displayed in my GUI window and not in separate windows, so i've created 4 axes windows in the .fig file.

The code for this particular figure draws a grid of 66 black and white rectangles based on whether or not a value in MyVariable is a 1 or a 0. Black if MyVariable is a 1, White if MyVariable is 0. I have a file for my .fig GUI, one file to control the GUI and one with user-defined code that links to the GUI.

function test = MyScript(handles)

lots of code in between

% Initialize and clear plot window 
figure(2); clf;

% Plot the west wall array panels depending on whether or not they are
% shaded or unshaded
for x = 1:11
     for y = 1:6
  if (MyVariable(x,y) == 1)
  rectangle('position', [x-1, y-1, 1, 1] ,'EdgeColor', 'w', 'facecolor', 'k')
  else if(MyVariable(x,y) == 0)
  rectangle('position', [x-1, y-1, 1, 1], 'facecolor', 'w')
end
end
end
end

title('West Wall Array',... 
  'FontWeight','bold')

axis off

The figure for the above code looks like this:

The function definition contains all of my script code for all 4 plots because I didn't partition my script into individual functions earlier on.

My GUI script code contains:

   MyScript(handles);

Answer 1

As DMR sais, it's necesary to set the 'CurrentAxes'. For example, if you want to plot into the axis with the tag name 'axis1' you should simply add:

axes(handles.axes1);

to your code. Below is a very simple example for a figure containing a 'axis1' and 'axis2' using your code (corrected) code from above. Im not really shure wether you want to plot on an axis on your gui itself or a separate figure. I hope I covered both cases.

function varargout = Test(varargin)

% Begin initialization code - DO NOT EDIT
gui_Singleton = 1;
gui_State = struct('gui_Name',       mfilename, ...
                   'gui_Singleton',  gui_Singleton, ...
                   'gui_OpeningFcn', @Test_OpeningFcn, ...
                   'gui_OutputFcn',  @Test_OutputFcn, ...
                   'gui_LayoutFcn',  [] , ...
                   'gui_Callback',   []);
if nargin && ischar(varargin{1})
    gui_State.gui_Callback = str2func(varargin{1});
end

if nargout
    [varargout{1:nargout}] = gui_mainfcn(gui_State, varargin{:});
else
    gui_mainfcn(gui_State, varargin{:});
end
% End initialization code - DO NOT EDIT

% --- Executes just before Test is made visible.
function Test_OpeningFcn(hObject, eventdata, handles, varargin)


% Choose default command line output for Test
handles.output = hObject;

% Update handles structure
guidata(hObject, handles);

plot(handles.axes2,-2*pi:0.1:2*pi,sin(-2*pi:0.1:2*pi));

% Initialize and clear plot window 


MyVariable = ones(11,6);
MyVariable(1:5,1) = 0;

axes(handles.axes1);

for x = 1:11
    for y = 1:6
        if (MyVariable(x,y) == 1)
            rectangle('position', [x-1, y-1, 1, 1] ,'EdgeColor', 'w', 'facecolor', 'k');
        elseif(MyVariable(x,y) == 0)
            rectangle('position', [x-1, y-1, 1, 1], 'facecolor', 'w');
        end
    end
end

title('West Wall Array',... 
  'FontWeight','bold')

figure(2); clf;

for x = 1:11
    for y = 1:6
        if (MyVariable(x,y) == 1)
            rectangle('position', [x-1, y-1, 1, 1] ,'EdgeColor', 'w', 'facecolor', 'k');
        elseif(MyVariable(x,y) == 0)
            rectangle('position', [x-1, y-1, 1, 1], 'facecolor', 'w');
        end
    end
end

title('West Wall Array',... 
  'FontWeight','bold')

function varargout = Test_OutputFcn(hObject, eventdata, handles) 

varargout{1} = handles.output;

Your guide GUI should look like this:

And your result like this:

Answer 2

You can set the axis to plot into prior each plot command by setting the 'CurrentAxes' property of the figure.

Within GUIDE, you can tag a given axis, for example: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_guis/gui-with-multiple-axes-guide.html . Then within your drawing code, indicate which axis should be plotted into via the 'set' function and 'CurrentAxes' property.

A simple example is below, though it doesn't use GUIDE, only basic subplot axis handles:

% plots in most recent axis by default (ax2)
fig = figure;
ax1 = subplot(1,2,1);
ax2 = subplot(1,2,2);
plot(rand(1,10));

% indicate that you want to plot in ax1 instead
fig = figure;
ax1 = subplot(1,2,1);
ax2 = subplot(1,2,2);
set(gcf, 'CurrentAxes', ax1);
plot(rand(1,10));