R2014b GUIDE performance issues

Is anyone else finding that performance of GUIDE in R2014b is really bad? In particular with respect to copying, pasting and multi-selecting UI components on a panel background.

For example, I often want to group together a bunch of parameters that will be defined by a text control, an edit box and a slider. This often causes me to copy and paste one or more of these to another location in the same panel to define a different parameter. Then I multi-select various components and fiddle with 'Align Objects' and also set some common settings in the Property Inspector (e.g. in particular textbox width in the 'Position' property).

These multi-select operations were always a little flaky in previous Matlab versions if you tried edit them too quickly or especially manically move them with lots of arrow key presses.

However, in R2014b any action in the property inspector seems to be really slow and unpredictable when doing this. Changing e.g. the width of a group of text boxes in multi-select sometimes just keeps ignoring my input and overwriting it with the previous value. When it does work it takes a lot longer for the multi-selected objects to all resize.

This appears to be related to the new graphics handles as in the title bar it keeps flickering around constantly between:

Inspector: matlab.ui.control.UIControl
Inspector: matlab.ui.Panel
Inspector: matlab.ui.Figure
Inspector: Multiple objects selected

even when I haven't touched the properties for quite a while.

In fact even when I just select a single one of my text or edit controls it takes forever for the Property Inspector to populate while it flickers around the Multiple objects selected title again (I can only assume it includes the panel here).

This is making GUIDE a very unfriendly tool at the moment for me to create a simple parameter GUI which used to be really quick in previous Matlab versions.

Am I just doing something wrong or are others also experiencing this kind of behaviour?

[Xavier]

I have the same problem. I created a code that works perfectly in R2014a but it does not in R2014b. The problem is on the uipanel function. The objects as bottons appear but the initial image that I want to analyze using contour3.

[Adam]

Your problem may simply be related to changes with panels that you need to just rework slightly to ensure the panel is the parent of anything it it. Usually this is the case by default when created in GUIDE, but it does depend how you create the components. Sometimes you can end up with components sat on top of a panel without being parented by it.

[Adam]

I guess this problem is not widespread then, even though it happens to me on seemingly every non-trivial GUI I create.

I suppose I'll have to get used to programatic GUI creation because GUIDE is close to unusable with this performance.

[Thomas]

i can confirm this. Multiple selected objects cannot be moved without getting laggy some time later.. I always need to restart Matlab to get it work again smoothly.

[Christos]

I have the same issues as well on OS X. It also randomly decides to rearrange controls on the canvas. I will look into programatic GUI as it is unusable for me too.

[Mike Wilson]

I am having exactly the same issue. Very difficult to get precise position of multiple tools. Normal workflow would be to get groups of tools aligned and distributed then multi-select those and "nudge" around with arrow keys. That fails every time. Some sort of move queue seems to get built up and executed VERY slowly. Then frequently the individual tools jump back to where they were originally. Quite frustrating, and this is with a very simple UI. Expect this problem gets much worth when scaling up to anything more complicated.

[Schultzy]

I am yet another user that has the same issue. Something is not right with how this functionality works. My experience is that it seems that the key strokes (arrow keys) seem to buffer up and then eventually get better. Has anyone found a fix for this?

[Alexander Lorenz]

Exact same issues as everyone. Hopefully MathWorks will look into this. Performance running the UI once it is created is fine, it is the creation and manipulation of UI objects using GUIDE that is severely broken. Within 10 minutes of creating a brand new UI and adding 10 simple objects like a few edit boxes, radio buttons, and an exit button does moving the objects, selecting them, and changing the properties becomes sooooo slow (virtually unresponsive). It will take 20 minutes to even save the simple UI. I continue to use R2012a to do any GUIDE development. This issue appears in both R2014b and R2015a.

My computer is an HP Elitebook 8560w with Intel Dual Core i7-2620M 2.7 GHz CPU's , with 8 GB of RAM. I was running 64-bit Windows 7 when the issue was seen, and it is still seen now that I have upgraded to Windows 10.

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

Have you used these Tools for Transitioning to R2014b Graphics?

[Adam]

I haven't. I may do for some of our old GUIs if they are causing a problem, but this is a GUI newly written in R2014b using the most basic of GUIDE functionality. The performance of the actual GUI itself is not a problem, it is the GUIDE creation of it that is close to unusable.

[Alexander Lorenz]

I agree with Adam. Issue is not with upgrading or using existing UI's in new MATLAB. It is in the new GUIDE. Creating a new GUI using GUIDE in R2014b becomes unusable after 10 minutes regardless of UI complexity. My detailed response is above.

Answer 2

[need1morecar]

Another bump... I am a Windows 7 user with 2015b and have the EXACT same issue. I've tried: re-writing the simple UI from scratch, re-starting Matlab, re-starting the machine, re-installing Java, re-installing Matlab 2015b (64-bit). Nothing has changed the behavior. Unless you are doing VERY simple manipulation of the UI, it makes using GUIDE nearly pointless. If you are willing to wait long enough, 8-25 minutes as noted above, it will get through, but you can't develop that way. Mathworks, please help!