I have been trying to figure out a way draw a filled rectangle on a contour plot through Labtalk. I have the X,Y coords of the boundary. Ideally, I would like to fill the region in with a specific color.

The closest thing that I could find in the Labtalk manual was the dotool command. It is easy to select the rectangle tool, but I couldn't figure out a way to perform the "click-and-drag" programmatically.

Unfortunately, the size of the rectangle will vary from plot to plot, and as the axes are rescaled, which appears to prevent me from creating a graphic object and just reloading every time I generate a graph.

You should create a Plot Template with one or more named samples of the kind of rectangle you need stored off the white of the page or set to invisible. You could then manipulate these objects through script. You must design these objects with pre-set Line type and Line Width and check Color, Pattern or Hollow because you will only be able to change the Border Color and the Fill Color.

Suppose I had such a rectangle named RECT1 which I stored as hidden. I could then run a script like:

RECT1.DX=.5;
RECT1.DY=1;
RECT1.X=5.75;
RECT1.Y=2.5;
RECT1.COLOR=4;
RECT1.FILLCOLOR=7;
RECT1.SHOW=1;

Note that a rectangle's position is defined in terms of its center and the edges are at X�DX/2 and Y�DY/2.

This helped quite a bit.

I had two follow up questions.

First, how would I go about (or is it possible to) overlay objects in a particlar order. (The equivalent of send back/bring forward). Objects appear to be added in back of objects that already exist on the window. I can add objects in a specific order to allow for some of the overlay consideration, but how would I change this on the fly programmatically? For example Rect1 overlays Rect2 in some instances, but how would I change this so that Rect2 overlays Rect1.

Second, I was unable to find reference to the method suggested by you for moving/resizing a rectangle in any of the Origin manuals/help files. This is probably because I am not looking in the correct place. Could you refer me to the appropriate location in the manuals for these types of operations.

Thanks again,
jeff