I have a fairly complex plotting problem that i thought it would be interesting to get a solution to. Say i have two plots, number 1:
This plot was created using plotyy.
And number 2:
This plot was created using plot3(x, y, z, '.')
Now, the complex part is i want to take plot number 2, watermark it and put it behind plot number 1. Which would result in something like this:
Effectively what i want to show is that plot 1 is made from data that looks like plot 2. Now i haven't been able to find how to do this so it may not even be possible, but if it can be done then it would be a great tutorial to have on stack overflow!
You can do this but it will take some work to get the axes formatted so they look nice.
What you need to do is put one axes object on top of another axes; however, to prevent the top axes from occluding the bottom one you need to set the 'Color' property of the top axes object to 'none'.
Here is an example script that generates something similar to what you are looking for
f = figure;
axes();
x = rand(100,3)*3 + 3;
plot3(x(:,1), x(:,2), x(:,3),'.');
axes('Color', 'none');
x = -5:5;
y = x.^2;
line(x,y, 'Color', 'r', 'LineWidth', 2);
Here is the resulting figure:
If you don't like how this works out you can try to project your 3D data into 2D and then draw that projection as an image behind your lines. Here is a link to a discussion about how you might go about creating the 2D projection.
Related
I have a Matlab plot that contains relatively high amount of different data and hence if i use standard legend representation, i could not figure out which legend color belongs to which curve.
So, is there any way to put legends on each curve? Lets say "BUS7" text should be located on the purple curve (undermost one).
Thanks.
I am trying to do something like this:
The text(x, y, txt) function allows you to add text at a given location on the plot. link.
Looking at your example, it seems that you want to have all the labels on the left-hand side. So, one way to do it would be like this, where I have generated my own dummy data:
leg = {'First Curve', 'Second Curve', 'Third Curve'};
figure;
x = linspace(1,10,100);
for ii = 1:3
y = x + ii*10;
plot(x, y);
hold on
text(x(1), y(1)+2.5, leg{ii});
end
Regretfully, this does not do anything clever with where the label is placed - it is merely placed slightly above the first point of the curve. You can clearly easily move it along the curve, but if you have many curves, like in your case, the labels will likely overlap and you will need to tinker a bit to avoid this.
I've never seen a plot like the following (the plot in (a) ). Is it even possible?
According to the profile page of #Ander Biguri
Matlab can even make your dinner, if you know how to use it.
Which answers the question, if this is even possible ;-)
All we need is basic knowledge of the axes command - the rest is just tweaking to make it look nice. Let's have a look at it:
We'll start off by creating some sample data:
t = 100:220;
x1 = -(10*(t-130)).^2;
x2 = -(10*(t-150)).^2;
x3 = -(10*(t-170)).^2;
Then we'll create an initial figure with a white background
fig = figure(1);
set(fig,'Color','w');
Now we can create a new axes object and plot x1 on it:
ax(1) = axes('Position',[0.1,0.1,0.6,0.6]);
plot(ax(1),t,x1+10^4*rand(size(x1)),'-k',t,x1,'-r');
We'll remove the box around the axes, so only the x- and y-axes remain. Further we resize the plot, so we'll have enough space for the other two plots. We also set the color to none, i.e. transparent.
set(ax(1),'Color','none');
set(ax(1),'Box','off');
set(ax(1),'Position',[0.1,0.1,0.6,0.6]);
Now we need to create the second graph. We'll just create another axes object at a position which we like:
ax(2) = axes('Position',[0.2,0.2,0.6,0.6]);
plot(ax(2),t,x2+10^4*rand(size(x2)),'-k',t,x2,'-r');
set(ax(2),'Color','none');
set(ax(2),'Box','off');
and so on:
ax(3) = axes('Position',[0.3,0.3,0.6,0.6]);
plot(ax(3),t,x3+10^4*rand(size(x3)),'-k',t,x3,'-r');
set(ax(3),'Color','none');
set(ax(3),'Box','off');
And simple as that, we get something that doesn't even look that bad:
Using multiple waterfall plots, as Horchler suggested:
%// create some sample data
t=10:20:110;
x=0:1:200;
Y=bsxfun(#(x,t) normpdf(x,t,20),x,t.'); %//' fix the code formatting on SO!!
%// Make a colormap to to set the colour of the lines
colormap([1 0 0;0 0 0]);caxis=[0 1];
%// Plot the first set of lines (red ones)
h1=waterfall(x,t,Y,zeros(size(Y)));
set(h1,'FaceColor','none','LineWidth',2) %// tweak the properties
hold on
%// Plot the second set of lines (black lines), just the red lines with some noise
h2=waterfall(x,t,Y+0.002*(rand(size(Y))-0.5),ones(size(Y)));
set(h2,'LineWidth',2)
hold off
view([16 28])
we can get this:
I have two signals, one for each axis and taken singularly and plotted in a standard way separately they would look like this:
However they represent different measurements and I need to superimpose them by representing one on the standard X-Y axis (bottom-left) and one on a different set of coordinate axis (X = left, Y = top).
I thought of the following code:
figure(1);
line(1:128,imagesXMatrix(i,:));
ax1 = gca;
set(ax1,'XColor','r','YColor','r')
ax2 = axes('Position',get(ax1,'Position'), ...
'XAxisLocation','left','YAxisLocation','top', ...
'Color', 'none','XColor','k','YColor','k');
line(1:128,imagesYMatrix(i,:),'Parent',ax2);
but am getting the following error:
Error using axes
Bad property value found.
Object Name: axes Property
Name: 'XAxisLocation'.
which I guess means that value left is not ok for the XAxisLocation variable.
What I would really want is simply the superimposition of the two following plots, any idea on how to make it happen?
Thanks a lot!
plotyy will do the trick:
figure(1)
AX = plotyy(x1,y1,x2,y2,'plot');
set(get(AX(1),'Ylabel'),'String','y1')
set(get(AX(2),'Ylabel'),'String','y2')
and additional properties like:
set(AX(1),'ylim',[...],...)
set(AX(2),'ylim',[...],...)
and more information in the documentation.
Suppose that I have 2 figures in MATLAB both of which plot data of size (512x512), however one figure is being plotted by an external program which is sets the axis parameters. The other is being plotted by me (using imagesc). Currently the figures, or rather, the axes are different sizes and my question is, how do I make them equal?.
The reason for my question, is that I would like to export them to pdf format for inclusion in a latex document, and I would like to have them be the same size without further processing.
Thanks in Advance, N
Edit: link to figures
figure 1: (big)
link to smaller figure (i.e. the one whose properties I would like to copy and apply to figure 1)
For this purpose use linkaxes():
% Load some data included with MATLAB
load clown
% Plot a histogram in the first subplot
figure
ax(1) = subplot(211);
hist(X(:),100)
% Create second subplot
ax(2) = subplot(212);
Now link the axes of the two subplots:
linkaxes(ax)
By plotting on the second subplot, the first one will adapt
imagesc(X)
First, you have the following:
Then:
Extending the example to images only:
load clown
figure
imagesc(X)
h(1) = gca;
I = imread('eight.tif');
figure
imagesc(I)
h(2) = gca;
Note that the configurations of the the first handle prevail:
linkaxes(h)
1.Get the handle of your figure and the axes, like this:
%perhaps the easiest way, if you have just this one figure:
myFigHandle=gcf;
myAxHandle=gca;
%if not possible, you have to search for the handles:
myFigHandle=findobj('PropertyName',PropertyValue,...)
%you have to know some property to identify it of course...
%same for the axes!
2.Set the properties, like this:
%set units to pixels (or whatever you prefer to make it easier to compare to the other plot)
set(myFigHandle, 'Units','pixels')
set(myAxHandle, 'Units','pixels')
%set the size:
set(myFigHandle,'Position',[x_0 y_0 width height]) %coordinates on screen!
%set the size of the axes:
set(myAxHandle,'Position',[x_0 y_0 width height]) %coordinates within the figure!
Ok, based on the answer of #Lucius Domitius Ahenoba here is what I came up with:
hgload('fig1.fig'); % figure whose axis properties I would like to copy
hgload('fig2.fig');
figHandles = get(0,'Children');
figHandles = sort(figHandles,1);
ax(1) = findobj(figHandles(1),'type','axes','-not','Tag','legend','-not','Tag','Colorbar');
ax(2) = findobj(figHandles(2),'type','axes','-not','Tag','legend','-not','Tag','Colorbar');
screen_pos1 = get(figHandles(1),'Position');
axis_pos1 = get(ax(1),'Position');
set(figHandles(2),'Position',screen_pos1);
set(ax(2),'Position',axis_pos1);
This is the 'before' result:
and this is the 'after' result:
Almost correct, except that the aspect ratios are still off. Does anybody know how to equalize everything related to the axes? (I realize that I'm not supposed to ask questions when posting answers, however adding the above as a comment was proving a little unwieldy!)
Consider the following example code:
load sumsin;
s = sumsin+10; % example data series
time = linspace(0,5*24,1000);
figure(1);
subplot(311);
plot(time,s,'k');
subplot(312);
plot(time,s,'k');
hold on;
[s_denoised,~, ~] = wden(s,'minimaxi','s','sln',1,'db4');
plot(time,s_denoised,'r');
subplot(313);
plot(time,s,'k');
hold on;
plot(time,s_denoised,'r');
xlim([20 40]);
Resulting in
I would like to alter this plot by inserting lines between subplot 2 and 3 to show that subplot 3 is a portion of subplot2. For example:
How can this be achieved in matlab?
Edit:
I was thinking of something along the lines of generating a invisible axes over the entire figure, obtain the position of each subplot, the location of 20 and 40 will be a certain percentage of the subplot width so I could use the annotation command from here to start a line and then apply the same method to the third subplot to connect the lines with the desired location. I have trying this, but no solution so far.
Just for the sake of the answer, you could use annotation objects to get the effect that you're looking for, as correctly suggested in a comment. Note that their coordinates have to be normalized to the [0, 1] range with respect to the figure window, so it might be quite tedious to adjust them.
This does get the job done, but it's horrible. Don't do it this way.
Example
Since I don't have your original data, I'll draw something of my own (but similar to yours):
t = linspace(0, 120, 1000);
s_denoised = sin(t / 2);
s = s_denoised + 0.2 * randn(size(s_denoised));
subplot(3, 1, 1), plot(t, s, 'k')
subplot(3, 1, 2), plot(t, s, 'k', t, s_denoised, 'r')
subplot(3, 1, 3), plot(t, s, 'k', t, s_denoised, 'r'), xlim([20 40])
Now let's add "annotation" lines like you want:
annotation('doublearrow', [.26 .39], [.38 .38]); %// Top double-arrow line
annotation('doublearrow', [.13 .9], [.34 .34]); %// Bottom double-arrow line
annotation('line', [.325 .325], [.38 .37]); %// Top little connector
annotation('line', [.515 .515], [.35 .34]); %// Bottom little connector
annotation('line', [.325 .515], [.37 .35]); %// Line
Result:
A bit late in the game, but still it can be beneficial to know of these optional tools that are available at the file exchange (FEX):
inset2DAbsolute - creates an axes inset, defined using the larger axes, and corresponding annotations.
On-figure magnifier - is a zooming tool for 2D graphics of images on the same plot. It is composed of two blocks (the secondary axes and the magnifier). The secondary axes, which can be arbitrarily allocated within the limits of the figure, displays the area marked by the magnifier.
Interesting question.
However, from my experience, beautification of graphs and plots can be done more efficiently using graphics software.
I usually use excel + powerpoint for this purpose.
Therefore, my advice (which is not exactly a good answer for your question) is:
export your data to excel, using xlswrite
use excel to create the desired plots.
copy-paste the plots to power point for "hand-crafted" finishing...