Advanced MATLAB: Subplots

The distinction between MATLAB Basics and Advanced MATLAB is a somewhat arbitrary distinction. The heuristic I use is “If I knew it before I came to The MathWorks, it is basic.” It is as good of a rule as any.

Some might argue this is a more basic post, but the inclusion of the gotcha and the use of property value pairs made this an advanced topic in my mind.

This short video shows how to put multiple subplots on a figure. Axes of different sizes can be laid out. The use of the position property is covered. A common gotcha is shown also where one axis overlapping another will delete the first.

Video Content

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10 Responses to “Advanced MATLAB: Subplots”

Doug replied on March 5th, 2008 at 2:03 pm :

It was just pointed out that there is a typo at two minutes into the video. The title of the subplot on the right should be:

h=subplot(‘position’, [0.6 0.1 0.3 0.8])

Sorry!
Doug

Antunes replied on March 9th, 2008 at 2:29 pm :

Hi,

Could you please give code to plot say 2 subplots side-by-side with the axes obeying the golden ratio?

thanks
a.

Doug replied on March 10th, 2008 at 7:50 am :

Antunes,

You should be able to do that with the ‘position’ property value pair. Just get the length and width in ratio and then position appropriately.

Doug

Bassam Awad replied on April 24th, 2008 at 9:04 am :

Hello,

I am trying to plot data in 393 plots with each figure include 25 plots. Any help is really appreciated.

Doug replied on April 24th, 2008 at 9:48 am :

Bassam,

That seems a little extreme to have 393 plot windows open. Having more than a dozen windows open in a Windows OS seems difficult to manage. I would try to think of a more effective way to display your data.

Maybe a GUI that allows you to select the graph you are interested in would be better. Maybe an animation is more what you need.

Doug

Dimitrij replied on June 6th, 2008 at 12:29 pm :

thanks for the hint: I finally understood the “position” command applied to subplot, and that dimensions are given in percentage of figure width and height.

Fikri replied on July 28th, 2008 at 10:21 pm :

Hi Doug,

got a simple question here, I’m making an interface for an image compression project. I needed to generate several subplots for the histogram, but here lies the problem. After generating all the subplots (which I put inside a panel, not axes) I simply can’t remove/clear/reset those subplots, which I need to do to make my ‘Clear’ pushbutton works as it is assigned to do.

a quick reply would be nice..

regards

Fikri

Bob replied on July 29th, 2008 at 5:51 am :

Fikri, see CLA.

jitendra replied on August 12th, 2008 at 5:45 am :

Hai Doug

I need your help in plotting a time-series data set and in the form of sub-plots.My domain size is 362 X 181 and like that there are 12 data sets.I need to plot all these 12 data sets of same dimension and animate later.
I need to make a script so that,it is operational.

I strucked from last four days to do this.
Thanking you in advance

regards
jitendra

Doug replied on August 12th, 2008 at 10:40 am :

jitendra,

I am not sure I understand your question. Please contact support for help.

Doug

About

Doug Hull is an Application Engineer at The MathWorks. A MATLAB user since 1994, he gets paid to live, eat, and breathe MATLAB! This blog is dedicated to promoting the File Exchange by highlighting files and original video content.

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