How to show x and y axes in a MATLAB graph? - matlab

I am drawing a graph using the plot() function, but by default it doesn't show the axes.
How do we enable showing the axes at x=0 and y=0 on the graph?
Actually my graph is something like:
And I want a horizontal line corresponding to y=0. How do I get that?

This should work in Matlab:
set(gca, 'XAxisLocation', 'origin')
Options are: bottom, top, origin.
For Y.axis:
YAxisLocation; left, right, origin

By default, plot does show axes, unless you've modified some settings. Try the following
hold on; % make sure no new plot window is created on every plot command
axes(); % produce plot window with axes
plot(% whatever your plot command is);
plot([0 10], [0 0], 'k-'); % plot the horizontal line

The poor man's solution is to simply graph the lines x=0 and y=0. You can adjust the thickness and color of the lines to differentiate them from the graph.

If you want the axes to appear more like a crosshair, instead of along the edges, try axescenter from the Matlab FEX.
EDIT: just noticed this is already pointed out in the link above by Jitse Nielsen.

Maybe grid on will suffice.

I know this is coming a bit late, but a colleague of mine figured something out:
figure, plot ((1:10),cos(rand(1,10))-0.75,'*-')
hold on
plot ((1:10),zeros(1,10),'k+-')
text([1:10]-0.09,ones(1,10).*-0.015,[{'0' '1' '2' '3' '4' '5' '6' '7' '8' '9'}])
set(gca,'XTick',[], 'XColor',[1 1 1])
box off

#Martijn your order of function calls is slightly off. Try this instead:
x=-3:0.1:3;
y = x.^3;
plot(x,y), hold on
plot([-3 3], [0 0], 'k:')
hold off

Inspired by #Luisa's answer, I made a function, axes0
x = linspace(-2,2,101);
plot(x,2*x.^3-3*x+1);
axes0
You can follow the link above to download the function and get more details on usage

Easiest solution:
plot([0,0],[0.0], xData, yData);
This creates an invisible line between the points [0,0] to [0,0] and since Matlab wants to include these points it will shows the axis.

Related

How to change limits of y-axis? `ylim` does not work

When the graph below is plotted, NSS1 which is simply a constant set equal to one is right on the top border of the graph and thus hard to see.
How can I change the length of the y-axis to say 1.2 so that the NSS1 can be seen more clearly?
lambda=5;
tau=0:30;
tau(1)=0.000001;
NSS1=1*ones(1,31);
NSS2=(1-exp(-tau/lambda))./(tau/lambda);
NSS3=((1-exp(-tau/lambda))./(tau/lambda)-exp(-tau/lambda));
%ylim([0, 1.2])
plot(tau,NSS1,'-k*',tau,NSS2,'-k+',tau,NSS3,'-ko');
xlabel('t = 0 to 30y', 'FontSize',30)
ylabel('yield','FontSize',30)
The reason why ylim doesn't work if you put it before the plot command is that there is no axes object it can relate to.
So there are two options:
First, you create an axes object and hold it with hold on, so the upcoming plot is plotted on the same axis.
ax = axes; hold on;
ylim([0, 1.2])
plot(tau,NSS1,'-k*',tau,NSS2,'-k+',tau,NSS3,'-ko');
or second, you plot first, the command automatically generates an axes object and you can modify its y-limits afterwards:
plot(tau,NSS1,'-k*',tau,NSS2,'-k+',tau,NSS3,'-ko');
ylim([0, 1.2])

Matlab plot a threshold line

I want to add a horizontal threshold line to my graph of 0.7. But I can't seem to get it to work.
Code
figure(1)
plot(Variance);
hold on;
plot([1 frames], threshold, 'red')
Variance is an array to be plotted and the frames are the number of variances that are plotted. I've tried moving the hold and plots around but it doesn't seem to work either.
I know this is an easy question, but everything I've looked at online doesn't seem to work either, with regards to adding them to the same plot().
Thanks
You should change the second plot line to
plot([1 frames], [threshold threshold], 'red');

Matlab: Plot3 not showing the 3rd axis

All the three variables I am using to plot are matrix of size 1x1x100. I am using this code line to plot:
hold on;
for i=1:100
plot3(R_L(:,:,i),N_Pc(:,:,i),CO2_molefraction_top_of_window(:,:,i),'o');
xlabel('R_L');
ylabel('N_P_c');
zlabel('CO_2')
end
However, I am not getting the third axis, and hence the third variable CO2_molefraction_top_of_window on the plot. May I know where am I wrong?
Besides the above question, but on the same subject, I want to know if there is any option where I can plot 4 dimensional plot just like the 3 dimensional plot which can be drawn using plot3?
So I had the same problem when using plot3. For some reason, using the hold on command "flattens" the plot. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the operation hold on performs on the plot.
Edit: To clarify, the 3d plot is still there, but the perspective has been forced to change. If you use the "rotate 3D" tool (the one with an arrow around a cube), you can see the graph is 3d, the default perspective is just straight on so only two axes are visible and it appears flat.
Just a note --- you only need to do the xlabel ylabel zlabel commands once (outside the loop).
Also:
is there any reason your matrices are 1x1x100 instead of just 100x1 or 1x100?
Because if you reshape them to 2D you can just do the plotting in one hit.
What do you mean by "missing third axis"? When I run your code (or as close as I can get, since you didn't provide a reproducible example), I do get a 3rd axis:
.
X = rand(1,1,100); % 1x1x100 X matrix
Y = rand(1,1,100); % 1x1x100 Y matrix
Z = rand(1,1,100); % 1x1x100 Z matrix
% Now, we could do a for loop and plot X(:,:,i), Y(:,:,i), Z(:,:,i),
% OR we can just convert the matrix to a vector (since it's 1x1x100 anyway)
% and do the plotting in one go using 'squeeze' (see 'help squeeze').
% squeeze(X) converts it from 1x1x100 (3D matrix) to 100x1 (vector):
plot3(squeeze(X),squeeze(Y),squeeze(Z),'o')
xlabel('x')
ylabel('y')
zlabel('z')
This gives the following, in which you can clearly see three axes:
If it's the gridlines that you want to make the graph look "more 3D", then try grid on (which is in the examples in the Matlab help file for plot3, try help plot3 from the Matlab prompt):
grid on
You will have to clarify "missing third axis" a bit more.
I came across a similar problem and as #Drofdarb's the hold on seems to flatten out one axis. Here is a snippet of my code, hope this helps.
for iter = 1:num_iters:
% hold on;
grid on;
plot3(tita0,tita1, num_iters,'o')
title('Tita0, Tita1')
xlabel('Tita0')
ylabel('Tita1')
zlabel('Iterations')
hold on; % <---- Place here
drawnow
end
As opposed to:
for iter = 1:num_iters:
grid on;
hold on; % <---- Not here
plot3(tita0,tita1, num_iters,'o')
title('Tita0, Tita1')
xlabel('Tita0')
ylabel('Tita1')
zlabel('Iterations')
% hold on;
drawnow
end

How to make 1-D plots in MATLAB?

How can I make plots in MATLAB like in below?
I won't need labels, so you can ignore them. I tried using normal 2D plot, by giving 0 to y parameter for each data points. It does help, but most of the plot remains empty/white and I don't want that.
How can I solve this problem?
Edit:
This is how I plot(playing with values of ylim does not help):
hold on
for i=1:120
if genders(v_labels(i)) == CLASS_WOMAN
plot(v_images_lda(i,:) * w_lda,0,'r*');
else
plot(v_images_lda(i,:) * w_lda,0,'b.');
end
end
title('LDA 1D Plot');
ylim([-0.2 0.2]);
hold off
One way to do this would be to adjust the 'XLim', 'YLim', and 'DataAspectRatio' properties of the axes so that it renders as essentially a single line. Here's an example:
data1 = rand(1,20)./2; %# Sample data set 1
data2 = 0.3+rand(1,20)./2; %# Sample data set 2
hAxes = axes('NextPlot','add',... %# Add subsequent plots to the axes,
'DataAspectRatio',[1 1 1],... %# match the scaling of each axis,
'XLim',[0 1],... %# set the x axis limit,
'YLim',[0 eps],... %# set the y axis limit (tiny!),
'Color','none'); %# and don't use a background color
plot(data1,0,'r*','MarkerSize',10); %# Plot data set 1
plot(data2,0,'b.','MarkerSize',10); %# Plot data set 2
And you will get the following plot:
Here's one way to reproduce your figure using dsxy2figxy and annotate. dsxy2figxy can be hard to find the first time, as it is not really in your path. It is part of the MATLAB package and is provided in the example functions. You can reach it by searching for it in the help docs and once you find it, open it and save it to a folder in your path.
h1=figure(1);clf
subplot(4,1,1);
hold on
xlim([0.2,1]);ylim([-1,1])
%arrow
[arrowX,arrowY]=dsxy2figxy([0.2,1],[0,0]);
annotation('arrow',arrowX,arrowY)
%crosses
x=[0.3,0.4,0.6,0.7,0.75];
plot(x,0,'kx','markersize',10)
%pipes
p=[0.5,0.65];
text(p,[0,0],'$$\vert$$','interpreter','latex')
%text
text([0.25,0.5,0.65],[1,-1,-1]/2,{'$$d_i$$','E[d]','$$\theta$$'},'interpreter','latex')
axis off
print('-depsc','arrowFigure')
This will produce the following figure:
This is sort of a hackish way to do it, as I've tricked MATLAB into printing just one subplot. All rasterized formats (jpeg, png, etc) will not give you the same result, as they'll all print the entire figure including where the non-declared subplots should've been. So to get this effect, it has to be an eps, and it works with it because eps uses much tighter bounding boxes... so all the meaningless whitespace is trimmed. You can then convert this to any other format you want.
Ok so the closest I have come to solving this is the following
hax = gca();
hold on
for i=1:120
if genders(v_labels(i)) == CLASS_WOMAN
plot(v_images_lda(i,:) * w_lda,0,'r*');
else
plot(v_images_lda(i,:) * w_lda,0,'b.');
end
end
set(hax, 'visible', 'off');
hax2 = axes();
set(hax2, 'color', 'none', 'ytick', [], 'ycolor', get(gcf, 'color');
pos = get(hax, 'position');
set(hax2, 'position', [pos(1), pos(2)+0.5*pos(4), pos(3), 0.5*pos(4)]);
title('LDA 1D Plot');
hold off
So in short, I hid the original axis and created a new one located at 0 of the original axis, and as I couldn't remove the y axis completely I set it's color to the background color of the figure.
You can then decide if you also want to play with the tick marks of the x-axis.
Hope this helps!
Very naive trick but a useful one.
Plot in 2d using matlab plot function. Then using edit figure properties compress it to whichever axis you need a 1D plot on !! Hope that helps :)

Fixing the Radial Axis on MATLAB Polar Plots

I'm using polar plots (POLAR(THETA,RHO)) in MATLAB.
Is there an easy way to fix the range for the radial axis to say, 1.5?
I'm looking for something analogous to the xlim, ylim commands for cartesian axes. Haven't found anything in the docs yet.
this worked for me... i wanted the radius range to go to 30, so i first plotted this
polar(0,30,'-k')
hold on
and then plotted what i was actually interested in. this first plotted point is hidden behind the grid marks. just make sure to include
hold off
after your final plotting command.
Here's how I was able to do it.
The MATLAB polar plot (if you look at the Handle Graphics options available) does not have anything like xlim or ylim. However, I realized that the first thing plotted sets the range, so I was able to plot a function with radius range [-.5 .5] on a [-1 1] plot as follows:
theta = linspace(0,2*pi,100);
r = sin(2*theta) .* cos(2*theta);
r_max = 1;
h_fake = polar(theta,r_max*ones(size(theta)));
hold on;
h = polar(theta, r);
set(h_fake, 'Visible', 'Off');
That doesn't look very good and hopefully there's a better way to do it, but it works.
Simple solution is to make a fake graph and set its color to white.
fake=100;
polar(0,fake,'w');
hold on;
real=10;
polar(0,real,'w');
In case anyone else comes across this, here's the solution:
As Scottie T and gnovice pointed out, Matlab basically uses the polar function as an interface for standard plots, but with alot of formatting behind the scenes to make it look polar. Look at the values of the XLim and YLim properties of a polar plot and you'll notice that they are literally the x and y limits of your plot in Cartesian coordinates. So, to set a radius limit, use xlim and ylim, or axis, and be smart about the values you set:
rlim = 10;
axis([-1 1 -1 1]*rlim);
...that's all there is to it. Happy Matlabbing :)