Using pcshow on a UI panel

Hi,

I am trying to plot a point cloud of data on an axes whose Parent is a uipanel. The uipanel was created on a figure. The issue I am having is that when I am trying to show the point cloud data using pcshow, I am getting an error as follows:

PC = pointCloud(dataPts); % Where dataPts is a Nx3 array of 3D coordinates
pcshow(PC, 'Parent', ax); % where ax is the handle to the axes whose 'Parent' is a uipanel

No appropriate method, property, or field 'Renderer' for class 'matlab.ui.container.Panel'.
Error in pcshow (line 106) if strcmpi(hFigure.Renderer, 'painters')

It seems like the pcshow only works when the axes's 'Parent' is a figure, otherwise it will not find the 'Renderer' properties (such as within the uipanel).

Is there any way of plotting point cloud data on an axes that is a 'child' of a uipanel?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Kind Regards, Andre

Answer 1

[Guojin Feng]

I had encountered the same issue. One option would be to modify the pcshow function Modify the line around Line 108

% Get the current figure handle
hFigure = get(currentAxes,'Parent');

as

htmp = currentAxes;
while true
    hFigure = get(htmp, 'Parent');
    htmp = hFigure;   
    if isa(hFigure, 'matlab.ui.Figure')
        break;
    end     
end

Hope this helps.

[Andre]

Hi Guojin.

Thanks a lot for this! I will try it out over the weekend and come back to you on it. I once tried to look into the pcshow function itself but didn't want to risk modifying it.

Greatly appreciated!

Andre

[Walter Roberson]

You can instead use

hFigure = ancestor(currentaxes, 'Figure');

[Andre]

Thanks a lot to both parties! I tried and tested both options and they all worked seamlessly!

Andre

Answer 2

[Sindhu Priya]

Hi Andre,

As far as I know, 'pcshow' does not allow you to plot on any other axes apart from 'figure'. You can use 'scatter3' fucntion to plot your data on the axes of uipanel as follows,

ax = axes('Parent',uipanel,'Position',[.1 .1 .6 .6]);
scatter3(x,y,z,'Parent',ax)

Please refer

https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/249427-is-there-a-substitute-for-pcshow

and

https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/scatter3.html

for further information.

Regards,

Sindhu