Workarounds

There are a few issues which may arise when using matlab2tikz for the first time.

• Filenames included as an argument (e.g. matlab2tikz(filename)) must be character arrays rather than strings. Either explicitly convert to char or make sure to use ' rather than ".

• LaTeX may throw errors if plots include high-resolution colormaps (e.g. imagesc or 3D surfaces) - files will be too big if they are more than a few kB. Use the cleanfigure() function included with the add-on to reduce content. Check the arguments if the wrong kind of features are being removed - e.g. use cleanfigure('pruneText', false) if annotations are being removed that shouldn’t be.

• If your LaTeX document has anything other than an a4 layout with normal margins, the size of the final image may be wrong. Use argument pair 'width', '0.8\linewidth' in the call to matlab2tikz to set it to 80% of the linewidth - determined by LaTeX on compilation.

• matlab2tikz will try to make all text look as it does in Matlab. If you have math-rendered content, make sure it looks right in Matlab first (e.g. change the interpreter to tex) rather than trying to edit the .tex file to make it look right.

• If you are not saving your figures in the same directory as your main.tex, any sub-includes (e.g. if matlab2tikz makes a .png file) must point to the right place. You can either edit the .tex file directly, or include the argument pair 'relativeDataPath', path where path is a character array pointing to the correct location of your .png relative to main.tex.

There are solutions to more common problems and pitfalls on matlab2tikz’s own GitHub page - see there if you’re having other problems.

I’ve compiled my workarounds to all of this in the following function:

function m2tikz(filename, varargin)
% Wrapper for matlab2tikz which solves the problems I have had. Leaves all
% text in the file, sets the figure size to 80% of linewidth, and includes
% the option for a relative path to figure location.
%
% Syntax:
%   m2tikz(filename)
%   m2tikz(filename, path)
%   m2tikz(___, Name, Value)
%
% Parameters:
%   filename : char or string
%   path: char or string
%   Name-Value Arguments:
%       Passed directly into matlab2tikz - see their documentation.

if ~isempty(findobj('type', 'figure'))
    filename = char(filename);
    cleanfigure('pruneText', false)
    % Do the default process
    if nargin == 1
        matlab2tikz(filename, 'width', '0.8\linewidth', 'mathmode', false)
    % More options provided on top, unpack using defaults.
    elseif nargin > 1
        % Make a structure which contains the default arguments. Then
        % overwrite them later if they are specified.
        args = struct('width', '0.8\linewidth', 'mathmode', false);
        % Path may or may not be listed with its argument handle name -
        % check if it is or not.
        if mod(nargin, 2) == 0
            % Path must be listed without argument name
            args.relativeDataPath = char(varargin{1});
            start = 1;
        else
            % Else path must be listed with argument name
            start = 0;
        end
        for arg = 1:(nargin-start-1)/2
            args.(varargin{1 + start + 2*(arg-1)}) = char(varargin{1 + start + 2*(arg-1) + 1});
        end
        unpack = {};
        names = fieldnames(args);
        vals = struct2cell(args);
        for arg = 1:size(names, 1)
            unpack = {unpack{:}, names{arg}, vals{arg}};
        end
        matlab2tikz(filename, unpack{:})
    end
else
    return
end
end