Error: Bad property value for color- why?

Hi, I have following error, which I don't know why it is occurring:

Error using plot
Bad property value found.
Object Name: line
Property Name: 'Color'.

I have many customized colors that I use via a cell:

cl={'w','bla','blat','w2','ora','orat','w3','sbl','sblt','w4','bgr','bgrt','w5','yel','yelt','w6','blu','blut','w7','ver','vert'};
plot([ xx fliplr(xx) xx(1)],[0 0 1 1 0],'color',cl{M{1,m-1}(q)+1},'linewidth',12)

Thanks!

[Image Analyst]

What is the value of M{1,m-1}(q)? Try this

M{1,m-1}(q) % Spit out to command window
fprintf('M{1,m-1}(q) = %d\n', M{1,m-1}(q)); % Again as integer

[Simon]

The whole code is

for m=2:n+1;
    subplot(n+1+size,1,m+size-1);
        for q=1:t;
        xx=[q-1,q] ;
        plot([ xx fliplr(xx) xx(1)],[0 0 1 1 0],'color',cl{M{1,m-1}(q)+1},'linewidth',12)
        hold on
        end
hold off
end

so right now the code gets stuck at

m=2, t=12, 
M{1,m-1}(q)=2, fprintf('M{1,m-1}(q) = %d\n', M{1,m-1}(q));
M{1,m-1}(q) = 2

The Idea of the whole code is this: I have n machines of which I want to show their statuses, like ON, OFF, Standby; each of the bars should have different colors for them (that's the reason for the many colors). M is a 1 x n cell containing 1 x t arrays. Those arrays contain the status of the Machines, for the first machine it is 0,1,2; the second 3,4,5 and so on. The whole thing worked fine when I just had 3 colors for every machine, which then were 0,1 or 2. (then I built in a loop so they would get higher integers for the color variation)

Answer 1

[Robert Cumming]

It looks like you are passing a string into the color command and not the RGB value:

i.e. you are doing:

 plot([ xx fliplr(xx) xx(1)],[0 0 1 1 0],'color',cl{M{1,m-1}(q)+1},'linewidth',12)

where cl is a string. It is not being evaluated to the RGB you want. While in theory you could "eval" the string - I would not recommend that approach.

A much better solution would be to use a matrix or cellarray containing the colors. Or you can use your current approach (using names) with a structure:

myColors.sbl=[0.35 0.7 0.9]; % skyblue
myColors.bgr=[0 0.6 0.5]; % bluish green

Then access the colors by using dynamic fieldnames:

plot([ xx fliplr(xx) xx(1)],[0 0 1 1 0],'color',myColors.(cl{M{1,m-1}(q)+1}),'linewidth',12)

[Simon]

Thank you very much!

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

Where did you get all those color names? I don't think they're ones that are recognized. Try simple things like 'r', 'y', 'k', etc. as well as 3 element arrays with values between 0 and 1, for example [.2, .3, .7].

[Simon]

I have defined those colors before, like:

sbl=[0.35 0.7 0.9]; % skyblue
bgr=[0 0.6 0.5]; % bluish green

that should be fine, should'nt it?

[Image Analyst]

No. Because you're putting the name of the variable in there, not the variable itself. It has no idea that the string 'blat' is the name of some variable you created.