returning an object handle from a function

I am trying to return a function handle from a function. The code is shown below:

function drawHandle = drawXYZ(XYZ,drawHandle);
    if isempty(drawHandle)
        drawHandle = plot3(XYZ(1,:), XYZ(2,:), XYZ(3,:));
        axis([-5,+5,-5,+5,-5,+5])
    else
    set (drawHandle, 'XData',XYZ(1,:),'YData', XYZ(2,:),'Zdata', XYZ(3,:));

    end

I first enter the function with an empty drawHandle (drawXYZ(XYZ,[]). When the line drawHandle = plot3... I get the error that drawHandle is a double and Matlab can's assign a function handle to a double. If I just replace drawHandle with a new variable x the assignment works correctly but still won't allow me to assign drawHandle to x. The function is called from a simulink function block but I don't see why that would make any difference. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Andy Cruce

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Graphics objects cannot be Simulink signals, not unless that changed in r2019a.

You can double() a graphics object handle to get the old style numeric handle. You might need to handle() the double to use it for graphics.

Answer 2

[Adam]

Try passing in

gobjects(0)

instead.

Yours works fine for me in Matlab, but maybe from simulink it is different and the type of a variable cannot be changed. [] is of type double, so assigning a handle to it requires a type change of the variable, which it may not like.

Answer 3

[Andrew Cruce]

Adam,

Thanks for the idea. I think it would work as looking at the documentation, sometime recently MatLab changed graphics objects from double to objects. Unfortunately the call is in a simulink function and when I tried I get gobjects(0) not supported for code generation. I'm thinking that I need to do this in a mask for the function which I've been avoiding since I can't figure out the documentation about masks. I tried to use the initialization part of a mask to initialize a bunch of points to draw but wasn't able to get the function to recognize the code in the mask initializaton section. Let me know if you have any other suggestions about how to figure out masks. In the mean time I'll work on understanding masks.