tight subplot

Fills the figure with axes subplots with easily adjustable margins and gaps between the axes.

Description

Subplot tends to leave a lot of empty space around the axes. Tight_subplot allows to adjust the spacing between the axes as well as the margins around the axes.
For example:
ha = tight_subplot(3,2,[.01 .03],[.1 .01],[.01 .01])
for ii = 1:6; axes(ha(ii)); plot(randn(10,ii)); end
set(ha(1:4),'XTickLabel',''); set(ha,'YTickLabel','')

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.10 (2010a)

[Alex]

i dont know what mathworks was thinking with their subplot routine... this is much nicer

[Alexander]

Thank you for this contribution. I like it very much.
In my opinion the input check should be like that:
if nargin<3 || isempty(gap); gap = .02; end
if nargin<4 || isempty(marg_h); marg_h = .05; end
if nargin<5 || isempty(marg_w); marg_w = .05; end

So you can modify marg_w and take the defaults for the other parameters.
tight_subplot(nrows,ncolumns,[],[],[.1 .05]);

[Thomas]

Good work. I needed to create several plots with several sub-plots within a loop. Had trouble with empty plots as the result and Matlab was broke until I restarted it. Even a plot(1:100, rand(1, 100)) would return an empty figure. Anyway, I returned the value for the axes position matrix "ha", and removed the internal axes command. When I was ready to plot in one of the figures I had being created to a specific subplot location I called:

figure(h4);
subplot('Position', ha4(fc4).pos); p=plot(1:100, rand(1, 100));

where ha4(fc4).pos corresponds to the fc4'th subplot position in figure with handle "h4".

[Einar Olason]

Excellent little script! Thanks a lot!

Still, I have one suggestion: Instead of saying "axes(ha(ii));" in the example a better way may be to say "subplot(ha(ii));". Using axes gave me unpredictable behaviour when setting up two plots side by side. I would (almost always) plot to the axes on the right, no mater how often I tried giving the "axes(ha(1))" command (or "axes(ha(2))" for that matter). Using subplot solved that. Don't know why though ...

[kos go]

 

[Brent Boehlert]

 

[Brent Boehlert]

Oops -- didn't know that rating the submission meant submitting. Excellent function that saved me tons of time in having to generate graphics through GIS. No clue why the subplot command has this issue, but thanks for addressing it!

[Dan]

Nice function, and one that I've come to rely on. It would be great if axes could span multiple columns/rows as you can do using the built-in subplot. Otherwise, great.

[Carlos Baiz]

 

[Matthew Schroeder]

 

[Matthew Schroeder]

Great work. Would be nice to be able to have the subplots fill a uipanel instead of the entire figure (doesn't play with within a GUI).

[Ravi]

Thanks a lot for the script.

[Rakesh Chalasani]

 

[Karl]

I second what Dan said. Spanning multiple columns/rows would be really useful. For example:
ha = tight_subplot(2,2,0.1,0.1,0.1)
axes(ha(1));plot(x1,y1);
axes(ha(2));plot(x2,y2);
axes(ha([3 4]))plot(x3,y3);

[Aditya]

Hey,

Great function. Pity I came across it after I spent much of my time writing a similar function. As some people have said above, I wanted the function to work with multiple rows/columns spanning subplots. So I included that capability in the following function:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/35464-spaceplots

Just thought it might be useful to some.