Moveit2 - Move a graphical object with the mouse.

Move graphical objects with your mouse. Works for pcolor, plot, patches and perhaps more.

Description

This is really a small hack that I wanted to share just to inspire more people to make interactive Matlab graphics. Use it as is or use the code as a template to do more advanced stuff.

Here is how it works (for a 2-D patch):

% First make the patch ...
    t = 0:2*pi/20:2*pi;
    X = 3 + sin(t); Y = 2 + cos(t); Z = X*0;
    h = patch(X,Y,Z,'g')
    axis([-10 10 -10 10]);
% Then make it movable
    moveit2(h);
 
It also works for e.g. pcolor and plot:

% Adjust data to fit hypothesis using the mouse ... :-)
a = plot(rand(10,10));
moveit2(a);

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; Move a 3D object with mouse in a traditional 4-view window
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)

[Jveer]

 

[Jveer]

5* for simplicity

[Anders Brun]

thanks a lot for the 5 star... Just a comment, there are still things that can be simplified. In particular I think it would be possible to store state of the object in a smarter and even more invisible way, instead of using the UserData attributes. Perhaps a global variable with an obscure name would do it.

[Jan Simon]

No, please do not use a global variable. The need of an obscure name is a warning already! I'd suggest using the ApplicationData of the object, see setappdata.
Itr would restore the original WindowButtonMotionUp functions after your function is finished.
H1-Line, comments, it works.

[Jan Simon]

Sorry, too confusing typos.
If the original WindowButton-Motion/-Up functions are restored after your function has finished, I will rate it with 5 stars.

[Gang Wang]

Hi Anders, I am using Moveit2 and find this interactive tool is great!

For my curiosity, I produced a 3D object patch (triangulated) and input to the function.

It can be observed that the object translates on XY plane. But the shape of the object is no longer preserved.

I did debugging and observed that the size of 'Vertices' matrix under the gui.currenthandle is automatically changed after line 66:
set(gui.currenthandle,'XData',XYData{1} + pos(1,1));

In other words, if the size of 'X' or 'YData' is [3 by 100];
then the new vertices size will always be updated to [3*100 by 3].

I guess some private functions updates the 'Vertices' whenever the XYZData is changed. But I cannot find the mechanism behind this.

[Jonathan]