MATLAB Creating Graphical User Interfaces

Lay Out a UI Programmatically

You can adjust the size and location of components, and manage front-to-back order of

grouped components by setting certain property values. This topic explains how to use

these properties to get the layout you want. It also explains how to use the

SizeChangedFcn callback to control the UI’s resizing behavior.

Component Placement and Sizing

A UI layout consists of a figure and one or more components that you place inside the

figure. Accurate placement and sizing of each component involves setting certain

properties and understanding how the inner and outer boundaries of the figure relate to

each other.

Location and Size of Outer Bounds and Drawable Area

The area inside the figure, which contains the UI components, is called the drawable

area. The drawable area excludes the figure borders, title bar, menu bar, and tool bars.

You can control the location and size of the drawable area by setting the Position

property of the figure as a four-element row vector. The first two elements of this vector

specify the location. The last two elements specify the size. By default, the figure’s

Position values are in pixels.

This command creates a figure and sets the Position value. The left edge of the

drawable area is 258 pixels from the left side of the screen. Its bottom edge is 132 pixels

up from the bottom of the screen. Its size is 560 pixels wide by 420 pixels high:

f = figure('Position',[258 132 560 420]);

Lay Out a UI Programmatically