MATLAB: Customizing MATLAB Plots and Subplots

MATLABplotssubplots

In an economics paper (https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018043pap.pdf), all the plots have invisible top axis, with Y-axis values marked on the right hand side with the axis label on top of it, differently from they way MATLAB plots figures in which Y-axis values are marked on the left hand side and axis label is written beside it in a vertical manner.

If you see their figure 9, for instance, which has 4 by 3 subplots, they all share the aforesaid features. More importantly, each individual plot is longer than wider.

THEIR PLOTS

MATLAB PLOTS

I want to generate plots like theirs in MATLAB. I looked around and experimented but couldn't find a solution. Worse, I cannot even figure out which application they have used for all their figures, if it's not MATLAB. Will appreciate any help.

Best Answer

The new(ish) yyaxis function to arbitrarily create two y axes and then switch between left and right axes w/o the need of yyplot to have two separate plot() arguments is useful for such things. As Bjorn says, it's a lot of fine tuning; some of which just can't do with the default Matlab components--like you don't have the flexibility to move axes labels so you'll just have to do them manually.

Here's another very rough starting point---

yyaxis right                      % create two axes; RH axis has focus
hAx=gca;                          % get a handle (YAxis property is the two axes handles)
hAx.YAxis(1).TickLabel=[];        % don't show labels on LH axis
set(hAx.YAxis,{'Color'},{'k'})    % use sedate color...
hTx=text(1,1,'Percent of GDP','HorizontalAlignment','right','VerticalAlignment','bottom');

produces

which has most of the features other than the partial box besides the tick marks at the top. You can always simulate this by line if it's important enough.

ADDENDUM

With Steven L's "gotcha!" comment, the above can be generated by using

hRYlab=ylabel('Percent of GDP','Position',[1 1],'HorizontalAlignment','right', ...
              'VerticalAlignment','bottom','Rotation',0);

Since it's a Y-axis label, Matlab by default writes it vertically so have to override that with the 'Rotation' parameter even tho is the default for a text() object....

Definitely better to use the axes properties and the access via x/ylabel() functions beats having to go handle-diving inside the axes object for hidden properties from its viewpoint.

My bad for not having carried through and written a label and probed it instead of jumping to the wrong conclusion regarding visibility -- have to admit in 30 yrs, don't know I've ever done anything to an axis label but change font size or the like, though.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Moving label for secondary axis

The axis labels are centered on the axis to which they're attached. It appears you used the third (2nd from bottom) subplot to attach the label to.

You can move the label via the editor manually, but programmatically, it's possible by changing the 'position' property of the label. The second value of the three-vector is the vertical location for the center of the label computed to center it on that axes in units of data coordinates. This is quite inconvenient for multiple plots where the data values aren't the same and there are multiple axes. The best idea I've got programmatically would be to

retrieve the axes positions for the bottom and top axes;
compute the vertical extent of these and then
write the label using that position with normalized coordinates

...[former manner elided for brevity...the following is much better]...

The only other solution that eases some of those problems but has other complexities is that one could create another axes of the same extent vertically as the range of the bottom and top subplots but laying to the right of the RH axes. There's an example in the documentation that overlays another axes in the middle of a 2x2 grid that outlines the basic procedure. In this case, with that axes of that overall height, the ylabel would automagically be centered vertically.

There's a File Exchange submission for super titles that addresses the issue for titles not being associated with each axes but overall; whether somebody may have submitted similar for legends or not I don't know; undoubtedly worth a search to see what could find.

ADDENDUM

As noted, had a few minutes and looked at the added-axes option a little more in depth...

for i=1:4,hA(i)=subplot(4,1,i);end
pos1=get(hA(1),'position');  % extents of top axes
pos4=get(hA(4),'position');  % and bottom
pos=[pos4(1:3) pos1(2)+pos1(4)-pos4(2)]; % overall extent of all axes
hAOuter=axes('position',pos,'visible','off');  % invisible one overlaying those
hL=ylabel(hAOuter,'Charcoal index','fontsize',12,'visible','on');

NB: 'visible','on' in the ylabel properties; it'll be 'off' by default as its value is inherited from the parent axes that we made invisible.

MATLAB: How to give labels and title to all subplot one time

One may use FINDOBJ to locate all subplots/axes on a figure and then use a FOR loop to label/title all the subplots. For example:

f=figure;
subplot(2,2,1:2)
text(.5,.5,'subplot(2,2,1:2)',...
    'FontSize',14,'HorizontalAlignment','center')
subplot(2,2,3)
text(.5,.5,'subplot(2,2,3)',...
    'FontSize',14,'HorizontalAlignment','center')
subplot(2,2,4)
text(.5,.5,'subplot(2,2,4)',...
    'FontSize',14,'HorizontalAlignment','center')
ax = findobj(f,'Type','Axes');
for i=1:length(ax)
    ylabel(ax(i),{'Nice'})
    title(ax(i),{'Very Nice'})
end

Hope this helps.

Abhi...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Moving label for secondary axis

MATLAB: How to give labels and title to all subplot one time

Related Question