App Designer: How to add components that are not listed in the library

The App Designer Component Library contains a limited number of components to drag and drop. There are many more components and functions available in Matlab, but I can't find documentation on how to incorporate them into the classes and methods environment (like App Designer). Some of these include:

sphere;
surf;
cameratoolbar;
plot3;
rotate;

There are non-object oriented examples for many of these, but incorporating them into methods is a challenge for me. And it would appear that folding them into App Designer is impossible, unless I pull the code out and put it in an independent script to work on. Suggestions?

For example, how do I even define the Properties for a sphere object when I don't even know the path to it? (matlab.ui....?)

Answer 1

[Cameron]

For these, you need to specify the axis. For example, if you have a UIAxes component, you would do this:

%for a sphere
sphere(app.UIAxes,10)

%for surf
[X,Y] = meshgrid(1:0.5:10,1:20);
Z = sin(X) + cos(Y);
surf(app.UIAxes,X,Y,Z)

%for plot3
t = 0:pi/50:10*pi;
st = sin(t);
ct = cos(t);
plot3(app.UIAxes,st,ct,t)

[Kurt]

Thanks. I'm getting closer.

How do I include the cameratoolbar in my app GUI?

[Adam Danz]

You need to supply it with your app figure handle.

For example,

cameratoolbar(app.UIFigure)

[Kurt]

That works.

However, back to the previous answer: When I try to insert multiple objects into the app.UIAxes, each succeeding object clobbers the previous one. (I'm modeling this on Ashish Meshram's Sun-Earth-Moon model):

function Earth_moon(em)        % where em is the app passed in with the UIAxes
    HEARTH = surf(em.UIAxes. x, y, z);
    load topo;      % Earth image
    set(HEARTH, 'facecolor', topo...    % so far, so good.
    
% place Moon's orbital path around Earth
    HMO = plot3(em.UIAxes, xMoon + xEarth, yMoon + yEarth, zMoon);

At this point, the HEARTH object gets clobbered in the em.UIAxes component. Apparently UIAxes doesn't know what to do with HMO, so it overwrites HEARTH. Where is this data stored, and how do I insert all three objects (Earth, Moon, and Moon orbit) into the em.UIAxes?

[Adam Danz]

You have to tell the axes to hold its current state

surf(__)
hold(app.UIAxes,'on')
plot3(__)

[Kurt]

Thanks. That works!