Is there a way to turn the y axis upside down in matlab plots, so that the positive direction of the y axis, instead of up, points down ?
(I beg of you; please do not say, print it out, then turn the paper around ;-)
The 'YDir' axes property can be either 'normal' or 'reverse'. By default it is 'normal' for most plots, but some plots will automatically change it to 'reverse', such as the image or imagesc functions.
You can set the y-axis direction of an axes with either the set function or dot indexing (in newer MATLAB versions):
h = gca; % Handle to currently active axes
set(h, 'YDir', 'reverse');
% or...
h.YDir = 'reverse';
I'm baffled by some of the other answers saying that the 'YDir' property has somehow disappeared or is giving an error. I haven't seen any such behavior in versions of MATLAB from 2013, 2014, or 2016. There are only two potential pitfalls I came across:
The property can't be set with a cell array, only a character string:
>> set(gca, 'YDir', {'reverse'});
Error using matlab.graphics.axis.Axes/set
While setting property 'YDir' of class 'Axes':
Invalid enum value. Use one of these values: 'normal' | 'reverse'.
although this works:
set(gca, {'YDir'}, {'reverse'}); % Property name is also a cell array
The gca function can't be used interchangeably as a handle when performing dot indexing (which is why I first saved it to a variable h in the above example):
>> gca.YDir
Undefined variable "gca" or class "gca.YDir".
>> gca.YDir = 'reverse' % Creates a variable that shadows the gca function
gca =
struct with fields:
YDir: 'reverse'
Finally, if you want some code that will toggle the 'YDir' property no matter what its current state is, you can do this:
set(gca, 'YDir', char(setdiff({'normal', 'reverse'}, get(gca, 'YDir'))));
% or...
h = gca;
h.YDir = char(setdiff({'normal', 'reverse'}, h.YDir));
The command
axis ij
Will also reverse the Y-axis (negative above x-axis; positive below).
The solutions on the top of the stack did not work for me,
imagesc(x,y,data) % results in a flipped plot, the y axis is upside down
set(gca,'YDir','reverse'); % gives an error
axis ij; % still gives the flipped plot
what did work was the following:
imagesc(x,y,data); axis xy; % results in the correct plot
The YDir property has vanished in the matlab version (2013 and up) that I'm using.
To update this answer, since it is still a popular Google result:
As of R2014a, the correct way to flip the Y axis is the following:
>> axis ij
This change can be reversed through the following command
>> axis ji
To flip the X or Z axes, do the following
set(gca,'XDir','reverse');
set(gca,'ZDir','reverse');
Personally, I think it would have been easier to keep the YDir option, but what do I know.
As an alternative to YDir (for some reason I cannot currently see) you can rotate the axes with view. To turn the y-axis upside down, use
view(0,-90);
Related
Quite a simple question but just couldn't find the answer online... I want to visualise a point cloud gathered from a lidar. I can plot the individual frames but wanted to loop them to create a "animation". I know how to do it for normal plots with drawnow but can't get it working with a scatter3. If I simply call scatter3 again like I have done in the commented code then the frame that I am viewing in the scatter plot jumps around with every update (Very uncomfortable). How do i get the scatter3 plot to update to the new points without changing the UI of the scatter ie. Still be able to pan and zoom around the visualised point cloud while it loops through.
EDIT: The file is a rosbag file, I cannot attach it because it is 170MB. The problem doesn't happen when using scatter3 in a loop with a normal array seems to be something with using scatter3 to call a PointCloud2 type file using frame = readMessages(rawBag, i).
EDIT: The problem does not seem to be with the axis limits but rather with the view of the axis within the figure window. When the scatter is initialised it is viewed with the positive x to the right side, positive y out of the screen and positive z upwards, as shown in view 1. Then after a short while it jumps to the second view, where the axis have changed, positive x is now out of the screen, positive y to the right and positive z upwards (both views shown in figures). This makes it not possible to view in a loop as it is constantly switching. So basically how to update the plot without calling scatter3(pointCloudData)?
rawBag = rosbag('jackwalking.bag');
frame = readMessages(rawBag, 1);
scatter3(frame{1});
hold on
for i = 1:length(readMessages(rawBag))
disp(i)
frame = readMessages(rawBag, i);
% UPDATE the 3D Scatter %
% drawnow does not work?
% Currently using:
scatter3(frame{1})
pause(.01)
end
The trick is to not use functions such as scatter or plot in an animation, but instead modify the data in the plot that is already there. These functions always reset axes properties, which is why you see the view reset. When modifying the existing plot, the axes are not affected.
The function scatter3 (as do all plotting functions) returns a handle to the graphics object that renders the plot. In the case of scatter3, this handle has three properties of interest here: XData, YData, and ZData. You can update these properties to change the location of the points:
N = 100;
data = randn(N,3) * 40;
h = scatter3(data(:,1),data(:,2),data(:,3));
for ii = 1:500
data = data + randn(N,3);
set(h,'XData',data(:,1),'YData',data(:,2),'ZData',data(:,3));
drawnow
pause(1/5)
end
The new data can be totally different too, it doesn't even need to contain the same number of points.
But when modifying these three properties, you will see the XLim, YLim and ZLim properties of the axes change. That is, the axes will rescale to accommodate all the data. If you need to prevent this, set the axes' XLimMode, YLimMode and ZLimMode to 'manual':
set(gca,'XLimMode','manual','YLimMode','manual','ZLimMode','manual')
When manually setting the limits, the limit mode is always set to manual.
As far as I understood what you describe as "plots jumpying around", the reason for this are the automatically adjusted x,y,z limits of the scatter3 plot. You can change the XLimMode, YLimMode, ZLimMode behaviour to manual to force the axis to stay fixed. You have to provide initial axes limits, though.
% Mock data, since you haven't provided a data sample
x = randn(200,50);
y = randn(200,50);
z = randn(200,50);
% Plot first frame before loop
HS = scatter3(x(:,1), y(:,1), z(:,1));
hold on
% Provide initial axes limits (adjust to your data)
xlim([-5,5])
ylim([-5,5])
zlim([-5,5])
% Set 'LimModes' to 'manual' to prevent auto resaling of the plot
set(gca, 'XLimMode', 'manual', 'YLimMode', 'manual', 'ZLimMode', 'manual')
for i=2:len(x,2)
scatter3(x(:,i), y(:,i), z(:,i))
pause(1)
end
This yields an "animation" of plots, where you can pan and zoom into the data while continuous points are added in the loop
I use plotyy to put two plots in one graph:
f = figure('Color','white');
[ax,p1,p2] = plotyy(xx, yy1, xx, yy2);
ylabel(ax(1),'Phase','FontSize',18);
ylabel(ax(2),'Spectrum','FontSize',18);
set(ax,{'ycolor'},{'k';'k'});
set(p1,'LineWidth',2,'Color',[0.4940,0.1840,0.5560]);
set(p2,'LineWidth',2,'Color','red');
xlabel(ax(1),['Frequency [THz]'],'FontSize',18);
set(ax,'FontSize',14)
Figure is displayed perfectly, but when I try to save it as fig something like misaligned boxes appears.
I tried to use linkaxes, but with no result.
plotyy has been one of my favorite MATLAB functions to love to hate. It's a really useful function that I always seem to run into bugs with, to the point where I've completely stopped using it in favor of just stacking two (or more) axes objects and plotting to them separately. You can then set the Position property of the 'sub' axes to the same as your primary axes and they will stack nicely.
A functional example:
xx = linspace(-15,15,100);
yy1 = sin(xx);
yy2 = cos(xx);
f = figure('Color','white');
ax(1) = axes('Parent', f);
ax(2) = axes('Parent', f, 'Color', 'none', 'XTick', [], 'YAxisLocation', 'right');
p1 = plot(ax(1), xx, yy1);
hold(ax(2), 'on'); % Hold to preserve our axes properties set above
p2 = plot(ax(2), xx, yy2);
hold(ax(2), 'off');
ylabel(ax(1),'Phase','FontSize',18);
ylabel(ax(2),'Spectrum','FontSize',18);
set(ax,{'ycolor'},{'k';'k'});
set(p1,'LineWidth',2,'Color',[0.4940,0.1840,0.5560]);
set(p2,'LineWidth',2,'Color','red');
xlabel(ax(1),'Frequency [THz]','FontSize',18);
set(ax,'FontSize',14)
set(ax, 'ActivePositionProperty', 'position'); % Resize based on position rather than outerposition
set(ax(2), 'Position', get(ax(1), 'Position')); % Set last to account for any annotation changes
Along with stacking the axes you will also note that I have set the ActivePositionProperty to position (rather than outerposition). MATLAB resizes axes automatically when the Units property is set to Normalized, and it seems like this is the main spot where the issue is arising. On resizing, MATLAB also modifies the OuterPosition value for the second axes, causing it to resize the plot portion. The difference is small, [0 0 1 1] vs. [0 0.0371 1.0000 0.9599] in my case, but the effect is obviously very pronounced. You can use get and set to fix this, but you'll have to do it on every resize which is fairly annoying. The alternative is to resize based on the Position, which seems to alleviate the issue and is a tweak present in the R2015b implementation of plotyy. This also fixes plotyy except for cases where the window is very small, so I have left my answer with the more generic approach.
I am trying to bold the right side y axis for a Pareto plot in Matlab, but I can not get it to work. Does anyone have any suggestions? When I try to change the second dimension of ax, I get an error:
"Index exceeds matrix dimensions.
Error in pcaCluster (line 66)
set(ax(2),'Linewidth',2.0);"
figure()
ax=gca();
h1=pareto(ax,explained,X);
xlabel('Principal Component','fontweight','b','fontsize',20)
ylabel('Variance Explained (%)','fontweight','b','fontsize',20)
set(ax(1),'Linewidth',2.0);
set(ax(1),'fontsize',18,'fontweight','b');
%set(ax(2),'Linewidth',2.0);
%set(ax(2),'fontsize',18,'fontweight','b');
set(h1,'LineWidth',2)
Actually you need to add an output argument during the call to pareto and you will then get 2 handles (the line and the bar series) as well as 2 axes. You want to get the YTickLabel property of the 2nd axes obtained. So I suspect that in your call to pareto above you do not need to supply the ax argument.
Example:
[handlesPareto, axesPareto] = pareto(explained,X);
Now if you use this command:
RightYLabels = get(axesPareto(2),'YTickLabel')
you get the following (or something similar):
RightYLabels =
'0%'
'14%'
'29%'
'43%'
'58%'
'72%'
'87%'
'100%'
What you can do is actually to erase them altogether and replace them with text annotations, which you can customize as you like. See here for a nice demonstration.
Applied to your problem (with dummy values from the function docs), here is what you can do:
clear
clc
close all
y = [90,75,30,60,5,40,40,5];
figure
[hPareto, axesPareto] = pareto(y);
%// Get the poisition of YTicks and the YTickLabels of the right y-axis.
yticks = get(axesPareto(2),'YTick')
RightYLabels = cellstr(get(axesPareto(2),'YTickLabel'))
%// You need the xlim, i.e. the x limits of the axes. YTicklabels are displayed at the end of the axis.
xl = xlim;
%// Remove current YTickLabels to replace them.
set(axesPareto(2),'YTickLabel',[])
%// Add new labels, in bold font.
for k = 1:numel(RightYLabels)
BoldLabels(k) = text(xl(2)+.1,yticks(k),RightYLabels(k),'FontWeight','bold','FontSize',18);
end
xlabel('Principal Component','fontweight','b','fontsize',20)
ylabel('Variance Explained (%)','fontweight','b','fontsize',20)
which gives this:
You can of course customize everything you want like this.
That is because ax is a handle to the (first/left) axes object. It is a single value and with ax(1) you got lucky, its ax again, but ax(2) is simply not valid.
I suggest to read the docs about how to get the second axis. Another good idea always is to open the plot in the plot browser, click whatever object you want so it is selected and then get its handle by typing gco (get current object) in the command window. You can then use it with set(gco, ...).
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.
I know there is a function named annotation can plot arrows or double arrows. But annotation can only plot in normalized unit. For example:
annotation('arrows',[x1 x2],[y1 y2])
Here, [x1, x2] should be a ratio number less than one.
So, my question is how can I plot arrows with a true value rather than a normalized value?
I wonder if there is any other function can approach this or is there any function I can get the axis value of the figure so that I can adjust the true value into a normalized value.
For the positioning of annotations, Matlab offers the function dsxy2figxy to convert data space points to normalized space coordinates. However, for whatever reasons, the function is not included in the Matlab distribution and has to be "created" first.
Copy the following line into the command window and execute it to open the function in your editor.
edit(fullfile(docroot,'techdoc','creating_plots','examples','dsxy2figxy.m'))
To use the function dsxy2figxy save it somewhere in your matlab search path.
Please find the full instructions for the function dsxy2figxy at matlab-central: http://www.mathworks.de/help/techdoc/creating_plots/bquk5ia-1.html
Even though annotation uses normalized as default units, you can associate these objects to the current axes (gca) and use data units for setting X and Y properties.
Here is an example of plotting a single arrow.
plot(1:10);
ha = annotation('arrow'); % store the arrow information in ha
ha.Parent = gca; % associate the arrow the the current axes
ha.X = [5.5 5.5]; % the location in data units
ha.Y = [2 8];
ha.LineWidth = 3; % make the arrow bolder for the picture
ha.HeadWidth = 30;
ha.HeadLength = 30;
For anyone who comes across this topic looking to draw arrows in "data space" rather than in units relative to the figure and/or axes, I highly recommend arrow.m from the file exchange.
I've just discovered this method, since I don't want to have to bother with normalised units. Use the latex interpreter:
figure
plot([1:5],[1:5]*3,'.-')
%// Say I want to put an arrow pointing to the location, [3 9]
text(2.94,8.3,'\uparrow','fontsize',20)
text(2.8,7.8,'point [3,9]')
To make the arrow longer, use a larger fontsize.
Pros
Easier, faster and quicker than using normalised units
Don't need to install any functions (good for us lazy people..)
making use of the LaTeX interpreter, there is a whole range of arrows (up, down, left, right and other angles (see Symbol list)
Cons
Definitely needs trial and error/tweaking to get the correct location of the arrow head relative to the POI.
There is limited control over the length of the arrow
Some latex commands aren't understood by the interpreter (boo).
If I remember correctly you need to calculate the position of the axes in relation to the figure.
it should go like:
%% example plot
clf
plot(rand(5,2)*5)
%% get info specific to the axes you plan to plot into
set(gcf,'Units','normalized')
set(gca,'Units','normalized')
ax = axis;
ap = get(gca,'Position')
%% annotation from 1,2 to 3,4
xo = [1,3];
yo = [2,4];
xp = (xo-ax(1))/(ax(2)-ax(1))*ap(3)+ap(1);
yp = (yo-ax(3))/(ax(4)-ax(3))*ap(4)+ap(2);
ah=annotation('arrow',xp,yp,'Color','r');
Note Fixed offset in original calculation - ap(3),ap(4) are width and height of gca, not corner positions
After creating the annotation object you should set the property Units to an absolute one. Example:
arrowObj = annotation('arrow', [0.1 0.1], [0.5 0.5]);
set(arrowObj, 'Units', 'centimeters');
set(arrowObj, 'Position', [1 1 3 5]);
One approach would be to define an arrowhead in the axis units:
Ax=[0 -0.003 0.003 0]; % (Ax,Ay) form an upward pointing arrowhead.
Ay=[0.01 0.0060 0.0060 0.01];
Ax=Ax-mean(Ax); % center it on zero
Ay=Ay-mean(Ay);
Then at desired arrowhead index in on a curve vv, compute
x1=vv(in,1); y1=vv(in,2);
x2=vv(in+1,1); y2=vv(in+1,2);
u=x2-x1;
v=y2-y1;
th=-pi/2+atan2(v,u);
R=[cos(th) -sin(th); sin(th) cos(th)]; % Rotation matrix for local slope of vv.
A=R*[Ax;Ay]; % Rotate the arrowhead.
patch(x1+A(1,:),y1+A(2,:),'r','LineWidth',0.01) % plot rotated arrowhead at (x1,y1).
plot(x1+A(1,:),y1+A(2,:),'r','LineWidth',0.01) % Kludge to make boundary red too (I'm sure there is a more elegant way).
Worked for me, for my particular circumstances.
You can use the 'arrow' component in the (well-documented) DaVinci Draw toolbox (full disclosure: I wrote/sell the toolbox, though arrows are free).
Example syntax and example output are below.
davinci( 'arrow', 'X', [0 10], 'Y', [0 2], <plus-lots-of-options> )