Unfortunately, docking figures into ToolGroups is for some unknown reason (apparently deliberately) prevented by the Matlab Compiler. I am not aware of any workaround for this, at the moment.

Thank you for all your great posts. They’re all extremely helpful. Could you please help me with an issue I’m facing? I’ve built an application with a ToolGroup and when using the Matlab Application Compiler, in the compiled standalone version, I cannot get hToolGroup.addFigure to dock a new figure in the existing ToolGroup window. I have tried a number of approaches and have been unsuccessful. For this application I am currently using Matlab 2017b.

Thank you,
Endri

@Arash – the “handles” that you refer to is a simple Matlab struct that contains the GUI handles in separate fields. You can easily create it in your code by assigning each created GUI object (tab, section, column, button etc.) a separate field in the struct, and in the end saving this struct somewhere. You cannot use guidata or guihandles because they only work with figures (not apps), but you can store the handles struct elsewhere e.g. in a global variable, or attached to one of the figures that you dock into your app.

Thx so much, Collin.
This works 😀

Chen

I don’t believe the R2016b version has any methods to set position

You can do it through the desktop:

jDesktop = com.mathworks.mlservices.MatlabDesktopServices.getDesktop;
jPos = com.mathworks.widgets.desk.DTLocation.createExternal(uint16(100), uint16(200), uint16(300), uint16(400));
jDesktop.setGroupLocation('A Test', jPos);

Collin

Thx a lot.
i think, it is probably impossible in 16b to set an opening size. i haven’t found any available function 🙁
but this is not that bad, in 16b the most new futures of toolgroup still work and till now they are enough for me.

Thx u again for ur post 🙂

@Chen – 16b is a relatively old release (19a is 5 releases ahead). It is quite possible that the setPosition method was added in one of these later releases. I have not investigated this but it’s possible that there may have been an alternative method in 16b (e.g. setLocation or whatever). You can run methodview(hTG) to check the possibilities, or upgrade to a later Matlab release.

Hi Yair,
thx for your answer 🙂
i have tried with your suggestion:

hTG = matlab.ui.internal.desktop.ToolGroup('A Test');
hTG.open();
hTG.disableDataBrowser();
jTG = hTG.Peer;
jPos = com.mathworks.widgets.desk.DTLocation.createExternal(uint16(100), uint16(200), uint16(300), uint16(400));
jTG.setPosition(jPos);

but i got error:

Undefined function or variable 'setPosition'.

PS: i’m using Matlab 2016b.

@Chen – I will discuss positioning and layout in a future post, but for now you can adapt the following script. Note that the positioning uses Java-based coordinates, which is (0,0) at the top-left corner of the screen, and increases downward and to the right, and the position is for the tool-group’s top-left corner. So, position (100,200,800,600) means a 800×600 window whose top-left corner is 100 pixels to the right, and 200 pixels below, the screen’s top-left corner.

% Alternative #1:
hToolGroup = matlab.ui.internal.desktop.ToolGroup();
hToolGroup.setPosition(100, 200, 800, 600);  % x,y,width,height

% Alternative #2:
jToolGroup = hToolGroup.Peer;
jPosition = com.mathworks.widgets.desk.DTLocation.createExternal(uint16(100),uint16(200),uint16(800),uint16(600));
jToolGroup.setPosition(jPosition);