Question
I've developed an application using the new App Designer. I'd like to have users be able to click a button and save a figure to a .fig file, or some other image format. function ButtonSaveFigureButtonPushed(app) newfigure = figure; copyobj(app.UIAxesAP, newfigure); hgsave(newfigure, 'testFIgure.fig'); end But that gave me the error... Error using matlab.ui.control.UIAxes/copyElement (line 1219) Functionality not supported with UIAxes. For more information, see Graphics Support in App Designer.,/pre> What's the best way to go about this?
Expert Answer
Prashant Kumar
PhD Expert
Answered Sep 12, 2026
I spent some time on this for my own purposes. The trick is to save the individual values from the figure into local variables to be used in a figure as follows:
h = figure;
h.Visible = 'off';
x = UIAxes.XAxis.Parent.Children.XData;
y = UIAxes.XAxis.Parent.Children.YData;
plot(x,y)
lgndName1 = UIAxes.Legend.String{1};
lgd = legend(lgndName1);
lgd.Box = UIAxes.Legend.Box;
lgd.Location = UIAxes.Legend.Location;
h.CurrentAxes.YLabel.String = UIAxes.YLabel.String;
h.CurrentAxes.YLabel.FontSize = UIAxes.YLabel.FontSize;
h.CurrentAxes.XLabel.String = UIAxes.XLabel.String;
h.CurrentAxes.XLabel.FontSize = UIAxes.XLabel.FontSize;
h.CurrentAxes.Title.String = UIAxes.Title.String;
h.CurrentAxes.Title.FontSize = UIAxes.Title.FontSize;
h.CurrentAxes.XLim = [0 max(x)];
h.CurrentAxes.XLim = [0 max(y)+1];
saveas(h,SaveName,'jpg')
savefig(h,SaveName)
delete(h)
Notice I have the visibility off, because I don't want the user to see this going in the background.
Note: You will have to change "UIAxes" to whatever you've named your UI figure
You could also add more properties, but you will have to go into your figure and find the object name to use.
I hope this helps.
Edit: I should also mention that to get this to work as function, I had to make it a call function in a separate .m file. I made a function SaveFigures(UIAxes, SaveName) that is called when ButtonSaveFigureButtonPushed. I have multiple possible plots, which is why I allow the UIAxes to vary. (I use a switch case to make sure I save the correct plot.)
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