How to Build a Simple Graphical User Interface in Matlab

By eHow Computers Editor

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Matlab is a very powerful mathematical calculation program. The normal interface is rather user unfriendly and is certainly not graphical. The power of Matlab extends to being able to control instrumentation and collect data from experiments. It allows the development of a graphical user interface that is much easier for a novice to use.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Open Matlab and in the command line window type, "guide." This will open the "Guide Quick Start" window. Select the blank GUI option on the left hand side. A workspace will open on the right side and will appear as a piece of graph paper. Along the left side of the window are the GUI visual creation tools.

Step2

Select the Text tool and place a name for the GUI inside the graphical area. Consider how you desire the function of the GUI to visually appear. Place the components of the interface on the window. Each component that you add possesses the same properties type table that most Window programming languages have.

Step3

Edit the visual properties of each component until it looks exactly like you want. Upon completion, you need to attach the programming to the components. When you save the visual components for your interface, Matlab generates a .m file of the same name and will contain the coding for this GUI.

Step4

Enter the code for the function of the GUI. A version of C is the programming language used for .m files. Save the file after the completion of the development of the code. The last stage of any development process is to test the functioning to make sure it behaves as you intended.

Tips & Warnings

A complete understanding of the C language is required to be able to accomplish tasks of any complexity. You should also understand the application that will be developed to design the layout of the GUI in a way that will be easy to operate and will display data in a meaningful and useful way.