MATLAB: How to load text stored in an external file and display it as an annotation in a Simulink models

simulink

I like to include lots of annotations in my model files that clearly describe what's going on in a visible way (without having to click to open documents or open links etc). However, our technical publications guys need to review, edit, spell-check etc any documentation – but obviously don't want to edit and resave MDL files, in case they break something.
I'd therefore like some way of giving them a separate file to review for a model containing the text for all the annotations (perhaps an xml file) but pre-load this to populate the annotation text in my model.
Any ideas how I might do this? PreLoadFcn callbacks & xmlreads?

Best Answer

It is relatively easy to export all the annotations in your model to a text file for others to review. After the review is done, I assume you want the modified text to be automatically loaded back to your model. This is a little tricky because there is no built-in function to link the text in your text file to the annotations in your model, with absolutely correct one-to-one match.
The key is to make sure the one-to-one match. To do that, you need to first assign your annotations a unique ID.
a=find_system(Model,'FindAll','On','Type','annotation');
for i=1:length(a)
  set(a(i),'UserData',i,'UserDataPersistent','On');
end
save_system(Model);
xlswrite('ForReview.xls',[get(a,'UserData'),get(a,'Name')]);
You can give the Excel file for others to review and take the updated file back. Try not to mess up with the ID numbers.
[ID,Annotation]=xlsread('ForReview.xls');
a=find_system(Model,'FindAll','On','Type','annotation');
for i=1:size(a)
  [Found,Index]=ismember(get(a(i),'UserData'),ID);
  if ~Found
    error('No matching ID found in text file.');
  else
    set(a(i),'name',Annotation(Index));
  end
end
save_system(Model);
If you don't want to leave those ID, run set(a,'UserData',[]) before save_system.
Use some caution, it should be able to solve your problem.
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