Create 'siteviewer' object without displaying it?

Hello,

Is there a way to create a 'siteviewer' object without actually displaying it? I know there's the option of running the command siteviewer('Visible','off'), but this command does display the object, even if it closes it inmediataely after. Is there some way to just create the object and have no display of it at all?

Thanks in advance,

Guillem

[Voss]

You could specify its Position so that it's off-screen, e.g.:

% get monitor position(s)
pos = get(groot(),'MonitorPositions');

% index of right-most monitor
[~,idx] = max(pos(:,1));

% a location beyond the upper-right corner of the right-most monitor
viewer_pos = [pos(idx,[1,2])+pos(idx,[3,4])+1, 0, 0];

% create siteviewer in that location
viewer = siteviewer('Position',viewer_pos);

[Voss]

That assumes groot().Units is 'pixels' (which is the default). If it's not 'pixels', you'd have to set it to 'pixels' before getting MonitorPositions and restore it to whatever it was afterwards.

[Guillem]

Hey, thanks for your answer. Unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem, the thing is that I'm running this through batch in a server, and the server doesn't have display functionality so whenever I run the 'siteviewer' command I get an error. I need the properties of the siteviewer object, however, to run the raytrace function properly...

Answer 1

[R]

To create a 'siteviewer' object without displaying it, you can turn on the Hidden property of 'siteviewer'.

hiddenViewer = siteviewer("Basemap","openstreetmap",...
       "Buildings","manhattan.osm","Hidden",true);

I have verified the above code in MATLAB R2023b as well as in MATLAB Online.

Since both Visible and Hidden are undocumented properties of siteviewer, I am unsure of their peoper usage. However, please note that you will not be able to 'reveal' the above hiddenViewer, i.e. it is only usable for computation. If you want to see the site aftewards, you will need to construct a new, completely visible siteviewer.