MATLAB: Does changing XTickLabel change the overall range of the graph axes

axisMATLABrangextickxticklabel

I create a figure and set the 'XTickLabel' property of the axis to be a certain range. When I set the range to [1:1:20], the axis only shows a range of [1:5]. When I change the range to [1:4:20], the axis now shows the proper range of [1:20] with intervals of 4. I want the range to be [1:20] with smaller intervals.

Best Answer

When you set the 'XTickLabel' property, you are setting the text that's associated with the ticks, rather than the values of the ticks.

Consider:

figure(1);clf
bar3(rand(20,30));
set(gca,'XTickLabel',0:20)
get(gca,'XTick')
figure(2);clf
bar3(rand(20,30));
set(gca,'XTickLabel',0:4:20)
get(gca,'XTick')

The values of the ticks are the same in both cases. The 'XTickLabel' only controls the text that appears in the labels (the numbers in 'xAxis' are cast to cell arrays of character vectors).

To set the ticks to be 0:20 or 0:4:20, just set the 'XTick' property. Alternatively use the 'xticks' command.

For more information about controlling various aspects of tick position, label, formatting and rotation, please refer to the link below:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/change-tick-marks-and-tick-labels-of-graph-1.html

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to change the Y-axis (or X-axis) values to percentage units and have these changes reflected on the axis

If you would like to merely add a percentage sign ('%') to your tick labels, without changing the scaling of the labels (ex. 1 ~ 1%, 100 ~ 100%), you can use built-in functions and/or properties of axis objects as of MATLAB R2015b.

If you are using MATLAB R2016b or a later release, you can use the "xtickformat", "ytickformat" and "ztickformat" functions to add '%' signs to your tick labels. Example:

>> plot(1:100)
>> ytickformat('percentage')

Please see the documentation page for "ytickformat" to view the alternative formatting options which are available:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/ytickformat.html

If you are using MATLAB R2015b or R2016a, you can instead use the "TickLabelFormat" property of an axis to add a '%' sign. Example:

>> p = plot(1:100)
>> a = ancestor(p, 'axes')
>> a.YAxis.TickLabelFormat = '%g%%'

Please see the following documentation page for more information about the "TickLabelFormat" property:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.graphics.axis.decorator.numericruler-properties.html#bun6izd-1-TickLabelFormat

If you would like to also change the scaling of your labels, such that 0.1 ~ 10% and 1 ~ 100%, there is currently no built-in function or property to do this. However, the units can be changed by scaling and appending the '%' sign onto the existing labels and applying the changes to the axis property "yticklabel" or "xticklabel". Example:

% Create an initial plot
  plot(0:.1:1)
% Convert y-axis values to percentage values by multiplication
   a=[cellstr(num2str(get(gca,'ytick')'*100))]; 
% Create a vector of '%' signs
   pct = char(ones(size(a,1),1)*'%'); 
% Append the '%' signs after the percentage values
   new_yticks = [char(a),pct];
% 'Reflect the changes on the plot
   set(gca,'yticklabel',new_yticks)

MATLAB: Does the formatting of the Y-axis tick labels change to exponential format when I plot the data

There are two possible workarounds:

1) You can set the Y-ticklabels explicity as follows:

x = [ 1 2 3 ];
y = [10000 20000 30000];
plot(x,y)
set(gca,'YTick',y)
set(gca,'XTick',x)
Yvalues = get(gca,'YTick');
set(gca,'YTickLabel',Yvalues);

2) You could also use the SPRINTF function to format your tick labels using the format of your choice. The 'XTickLabel' or 'YTickLabel' property of the axis would then use those strings as tick labels.

x=[1 2 3];
y=[10000 20000 30000];
plot(x,y)
set(gca,'XTickLabel',sprintf('%3.1f|',x))
set(gca,'XTick',x)
set(gca,'YTickLabel',sprintf('%4.1e|',y))
set(gca,'YTick',y)

For more information on the available formats, consult the documentation for the SPRINTF function:

doc sprintf

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to change the Y-axis (or X-axis) values to percentage units and have these changes reflected on the axis

MATLAB: Does the formatting of the Y-axis tick labels change to exponential format when I plot the data

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