How can I extract just the "real" axes from figures? Filtering out handles to annotation and legend.

Here is a scenario. You have a large number of figures open. Say each figure has a "main" axes showing some line plots, and also some "other" axes, like a legend, annotation, etc. So

figs=get(0,'children');
axss=get(figs,'children');

returns a vector of cell arrays. axss{k} contains all the children of figs(k), only one of which is the "main" axis you need to work with. So what is the best way to filter out the rest? Looking at

get(axss{k},'type')

you may find that many of the objects have type axes. Is there a quick way to distinguish what is not annotation?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

I cannot test at the moment, but my recollection is that legend and annotation axes are given Tag values that indicate what they are.

Something similar to,

findobj(0, 'type', 'axes', '-not', 'Tag', '__Annotation__', '-and', '-not', 'Tag', '__Legend__')

[Naor Movshovitz]

Ah, that is a good place to start. Fortunately for me, the data containing axes were probably not tagged at all so it's even easier.