expandAxes

Click any axes to expand it in a separate figure. Right-click expanded axes to export contents!

Description

FUNCTION EXPANDAXES(HNDLS)

Allows you to click on any axes (or child thereof) in the list of input handles. Left-clicking will popup a new window in the position of the original, filled with the single axes and all its children. Clicking on that figure closes the popup window. (Right-clicking restores non-expanding status to the axis.)

SYNTAX:
expandAxes
     Sets the current axes to expand on buttondown.
  
expandAxes(hndls)
     Sets all axes in the input list of handles to expand on buttondown.

NOTE: This function modifies the BUTTONDOWNFCN of axes in the input list, and their children. However, it will not modify any object whose buttondownfcn is nonempty.
 
MOTIVATION:
In real estate, there's a saying: "Location, location, location." In computer graphics, the saying is (or ought to be): "Real estate, real estate, real estate." This function allows you to show a lot more plots, graphics, etc. in a single figure without sacrificing the ability to see larger versions of same.

Acknowledgements

This file inspired Segment Tool: An Interactive Gui For Segmenting Images and Explore Rgb.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.5 (R2007b)

[Jurgen]

 

[Brett Shoelson]

NOTE: Maryam also asked me if she could modify the tick marks on the pop-up axis. That, too, is easily done. Just make whatever changes you want to customize new_ax at the appropriate place in the code. For instance:

set(new_ax,'units','normalized',...
'position',[0.1 0.1 0.8 0.8],...
'xtickmode','auto','ytickmode','auto');

Cheers,
Brett

[Brett Shoelson]

Maryam, it's very easy to make expandAxes do what you want. Just modify the single line in subfunction "exapandIt" where I create the figure. Change 'menubar','none' to 'menubar','figure'. Let me know if that works for you.
Cheers,
Brett

[Maryam Vareth]

This function is very useful. Thank you!! I was just wondering whether there is an easy way to also add an option to have a full functioning popup plots (meaning, to click into one of the interesting thumbnail images and be able to look at the values, intensities, (things that we can do in regular plot window)? ...

[Brett Shoelson]

Thanks, Adi. For users of older versions of MATLAB, please note the single quotes around 'isempty' in Adi's comments.

[Adi]

Great gizmo.
Justa little remark. For those still using old Matlab 7.0 R14 I found that " @isempty " needs to be changes to " 'isempty' " in order to work. Good job, thanks.

[Sergey Karpov]

Thank u!

[John D'Errico]

A creative way to turn a whole mess of plots into thumbnail images. Then you can click on only the ones you want to see to bring them up.

[Bob Rooney]

Perfect! Thanks alot.

[Olivier B.]

Simple but very usefull when managing lot of subplots !