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Installing MATLAB

The University of Colorado has a site license for MATLAB. Follow the instructions for installing MATLAB using the CU Anschutz site license here. Be sure to use the instructions specific to students and be sure to use your CU Anschutz email.

If you're not at CU Anschutz

If you are not a student at CU Anschutz, check if your university offers a site license for MATLAB. Alternatively, Mathworks offers a free online version of MATLAB. This free version should work for most of the example code documented on this site. MATLAB also offers reasonably priced licenses for students or for home use.

Important Caveats before installing

You do not need to install all of the MATLAB toolboxes included with the site license. Installing them all will gobble up a lot of storage on your computer. If you are interested in saving space on your computer, only install the following:

If you don't care about space on your computer, then feel free to install everything.

If you have previously installed MATLAB on your computer, upgrade it to the latest version. Each iteration improves upon the previous version and this course is continually updated to take advantage of the latest improvements. Upgrading typically means installing a whole new version on your computer (and leaving the old version intact). Feel free to trash the old version once the new version is installed and is working.

If you have already run the installer and did not install one of these toolboxes or if you installed too many toolboxes, you can add (or remove) toolboxes using the Add-on Manager from within MATLAB. To launch the Add-on manager, simply navigate to the MATLAB home tab and click on the Add-Ons icon (3 colored stacked cubes).

Installing the MATLAB Drive Connector

MATLAB Drive is a free cloud drive similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, but optimized to share MATLAB scripts and functions. Follow the instructions here to install MATLAB Connector app on your computer. Once installed, there will be a local folder on your computer called MATLAB Drive, which will sync with the Mathworks Cloud servers.

The MATLAB Connector is an additional application that you install on your computer. The main job of this application is to sync an online folder to a folder on your computer. Syncing can sometimes take time, especially if there are a lot of files that need to be copied. You can keep track of the sync status by bringing up the MATLAB Connector window. Depending on whether you have a Mac or a PC, there should be a little icon (with the MATLAB logo on it) that you can click on in the menubar (or Windows task bar) that shows you the current sync status.

If you encounter issues with syncing, ensure that your internet connection is stable, and try restarting the MATLAB Connector application. If the problem persists, consult the MATLAB Drive troubleshooting guide.

MATLAB Drive Connector window showing sync status and options

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  • The Globe icon will open your web browser and take you to the online site
  • The Folder icon will take you to the local location on your computer where the files are synced
  • The gear icon brings up some preferences

Add Shared MATLAB Folders

Now that you have installed MATLAB drive, you will want to add the shared course folder to your drive. This folder, called the MTMdata folder, contains example data files and images. Click on this shared folder link to add the MTMdata folder to your MATLAB drive.

You can find the shared MATLAB folders in the online version of MATLAB Drive, provided that you have logged in with your university account. To view pending invitations in MATLAB Drive online, click Shared Content on the left side of the page.

Screenshot showing the shared contents page in MATLAB Drive, highlighting the "Add Shortcut" option

Click on "Add Shortcut". This will create a shortcut to the shared folder, and the contents will stay in sync with the contents in the original folder. The files found in these folders are read-only. If you would like to modify the files, you will have to make a copy of the files and store them somewhere else on your computer or in another folder on the MATLAB drive.

Additional Toolboxes from github

We will also be using additional MATLAB toolboxes that you can download from github. You can find detailed Instructions for adding these toolboxes to your MATLAB drive here.