Copy a figure then add more data

Hi,

I created a figure with some data. I would like to copy that figure a couple of times, and add different data to each of the copies. I followed the advice in http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/172272 to copy the figure, but adding data to the figure doesn't seem to work as expected. When I run the following code, I get a 'Error using ==> isappdata' 'Invalid object handle'. It seems to be an error with the legend function, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Thanks.

    x=[1 2 3 4 5];
    M1=[1 2 3 4 5];
    S1=[2 3 2 1 1];
    M2=[2 2 2 2 2];
    S2=[1 1 1 1 1];
    M3=[5 4 3 2 1];
    S3=[2 3 3 3 3];
    M4=[5 1 2 6 3];
    S4=[1 1 1 1 1];
    figure
    eIMFig=gcf;
    errorbar(x,M1,S1)
    hold all
    errorbar(x,M2,S2)
    legendCell={'mydat1','mydat2'};
    legend(legendCell)

    figure
    h2=gcf;
    copyobj(get(eIMFig,'children'),h2);
    figure(h2)
    hold all
    errorbar(x,M3,S3)
    errorbar(x,M4,S4)
    legendCellNew=legendCell;
    legendCellNew{end+1}='mydat3';
    legendCellNew{end+1}='mydat4';
    legend(legendCellNew)

Answer 1

[Matt Fig]

I am thinking this is a bug. The problem relates to the way legend works after COPYOBJ. It seems that MATLAB does not recognize previous axes children. When I run this, I get a warning:

Warning: Ignoring extra legend entries. 
> In legend at 292
  In copy_fig_pro at 52

.

.

x=[1 2 3 4 5];
M1=[1 2 3 4 5];
S1=[2 3 2 1 1];
M2=[2 2 2 2 2];
S2=[1 1 1 1 1];
M3=[5 4 3 2 1];
S3=[2 3 3 3 3];
M4=[5 1 2 6 3];
S4=[1 1 1 1 1];
eIMFig=figure;
errorbar(x,M1,S1)
hold all
errorbar(x,M2,S2)
legendCell={'mydat1','mydat2'};
legend(legendCell)
% Now the copying....
h2 = figure;
C = copyobj(get(eIMFig,'children'),h2);  % Copies legend too!
figure(h2)
axes(C(2))  % Set plotting axes to current, not legend.
hold all
errorbar(x,M3,S3)
errorbar(x,M4,S4)
legendCellNew=legendCell;
legendCellNew{end+1}='mydat3';
legendCellNew{end+1}='mydat4';
delete(findall(gcf,'tag','legend'));  % Delete the copied legend.
drawnow  % Update figure
legend(legendCellNew)  % Add a new legend, and we get the warning.

.

.

.

Rather than deleting, I tried to set the string of the copied legend, but only got various errors, depending on how I did it.

[Matt Fig]

I found that replacing the last line of the above with this created the correct legend:

legend(get(C(2),'children'),legendCellNew)

[Matt Fig]

This behavior seems to be related to this bug report.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

The wrong axes ends up as the current axes for some reason (that is, I debugged far enough to determine that the axes was not the one might expect.)

I recommend using the parenting techniques I described at http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/answers/22208-show-figure