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','')

Acknowledgements

This file inspired Subtightplot.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.10 (R2010a)

[Rina]

 

[Panagiotis Papagiannopoulos]

this file really helped me! however i have one question. i want to set fixed limits of the x,y axis in each subplot.For example: (axis([0 700 -500 10000])).i tried to do it but with no result. any advice of how can i do this?

[Ahmed Fasih]

 

[Beth]

 

[Felipe G. Nievinski]

It's great that it offers variable outer margins in addition to inner gaps. I wish it could support asymmetric plots, where a panel spans multiple rows/columns, though.

[Lucas Koorneef]

 

[Philip Valencia]

Nice, very handy, though by default I prefer my tick labels left on... others who want this might just mod the file.. just remove in the inner loop where it sets the ticks off... i.e.

for ix = 1:Nw
ii = ii+1;
ha(ii) = axes('Units','normalized', ...
'Position',[px py axw axh]);
px = px+axw+gap(2);
end

[Thomas]

 

[Gal Haspel]

useful and does what it claims

[Giovanni]

This is a great script. I'm experiencing a bug that makes my ticks disappear. Here's a sample:

figure('position',[100 100 1000 600])
ha=tight_subplot(1,3,[.02,.02],[.12,.08],[.1,.02]);
for a=ha'
hold(a,'all')
box(a,'on')
xlim(a,[.1 10])
ylim(a,[-90 10])
end
set(ha,'xscale','log','fontsize',fontSize,'ytick',-100:10:20,'yticklabel',[],'yminortick','on')
set(ha(1),'yticklabel',-100:10:20)
% 1
scatter(ha(1),x11,10*log10(y11),30,[0 .5 0],'x');
scatter(ha(1),x12,10*log10(y12),30,[0 0 1],'filled');
% 2
scatter(ha(2),x21,10*log10(y21),30,[0 .5 0],'x');
scatter(ha(2),x22,10*log10(y22),30,[0 0 1],'filled');
% 3
scatter(ha(3),x31,10*log10(y31),30,[0 .5 0],'x');
scatter(ha(3),x32,10*log10(y32),30,[0 0 1],'filled');

I would expect to see xticks at .1, 1 and 10, but on my system they simply disappear. If I tried and add them manually the log scale gets screwed up, so there's gotta be another way around. I'm using Matlab R2012a.
Thanks!

[Marin]

Really excellent file, thank you. Maybe an extra example wouldn't be a bad idea in the comments for the new Matlab user to better learn to use this file.

I have two questions though if I may ask them here...

1. How do i add numbers on the y axis? (only on the rightmost side of course)

2. How do I write x & y labels? (only one that applies to all axis)

Thank you in advance.

[alexpapi]

 

[Kevin Claytor]

Very nice, needed something exactly like this, and it's quite easy to use.

[Jiangmin zhang]

i cannot do anything but give a five star! absolutely smarter than mathworks!

[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.

[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);

[Rakesh Chalasani]

 

[Ravi]

Thanks a lot for the script.

[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).

[Matthew Schroeder]

 

[Carlos Baiz]

 

[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.

[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!

[Brent Boehlert]

 

[kos go]

 

[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 ...

[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".

[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]);

[Alex]

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