how to create shortcut for "brushing/create new variable"

I brush out bad data points in plots and assign them to a "bad" data variable. I do this using the brush tool -> Tools -> Brushing -> Create New Variable and call the variable "bad"

This works great but is very cumbersome and repetitive in the GUI with the pull down menu... Is there a way to create a shortcut or shortcut button to accomplish this task in one click? would the button reside in the command window pane, or the figure panes? how can I do this?

Many thanks for any help here.

OSX lion matlab 2011b

Answer 1

[Yair Altman]

You might find the following article relevant in your search for programmatic access to plot data-brushing: http://UndocumentedMatlab.com/blog/accessing-plot-brushed-data/

Answer 2

[per isakson]

Did you search the FEX? You might want to try Graphical data selection tool by John D'Errico.

Below is the result of an experiment I just made. It's primitive but I think it helps.

Download the FEX contribution ALWAYSONTOP by Elmar Tarajan.

Interactive steps

    alwaysontop('auto')

    plot( your_data )  % it doesn't work with scatter

click the alwaysontop icon and run in the base workspace

    bad_data = cell(0);
    graph_handle = findobj( gcf, '-property', 'BrushData' );

Select some points with the brushing tool and run the command

    bad_data = cat( 1, bad_data, { get( graph_handle, 'BrushData' ) } );

Select more points and double click the command above in the command history. Putting it in a shortcut doesn't really help much. I don't think it is possible to bind a command to a keystroke-shortcut. Run the command

    is_bad = any( cell2mat( bad_data ), 1 );

Now is_bad indicates all points selected as bad.

The code could be put in a script with each group of commands in a separate cell. The the code can be run by clicking [Evaluate Cell].

This is a first step towards something better.

--- Cont. ---

I've made two observations:

• the approach described above works with scatter if the number of point is less than 100. See "Undocumented scatter plot behavior" at Undocumented Matlab
• "graph_handle = findobj( gcf, '-property', 'BrushData' );" started to return empty. After restarting Matlab it works again.

It's no point to make bad_data a cell array.