MATLAB: How to control number of minor ticks between the major ticks

controlmajor tickminor tick

How to put desired number of minor ticks between two major ticks.

Like for a 24 hours data, I may like to indicate every 15-min data with a minor tick.

In that case I may need 3-minor ticks per 1 major ticks.

Other way round, if i need to indicate every 30-min data with a minor tick.

In that case I may need 1-minor ticks per 1 major ticks.

So how to control these number of tick marks??

Any suggestions…?

Best Answer

You can specify the MinorTickValues:

axesH = axes;
plot(axesH, 1:10);
axesH.XAxis.MinorTick       = 'on';
axesH.XAxis.MinorTickValues = 1:0.25:10;

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Unrecognized property ‘TicksBetween’ for class ‘matlab.graphics.axis.Axes’.

As far as I know TicksBetween has never been a property of axes.

You can set the location of the minor ticks by changing the MinorTickValues of the numeric ruler:

ax.XAxis.MinorTickValues = movmean(ax.XAxis.TickValues, 2, 'EndPoints', 'discard');
ax.XAxis.MinorTick = ' on';

will give you exactly one minor tick between each major tick.

MATLAB: How to write in the middle of ticks

Datetime x-ticks for 6-month intervals

It looks like you want to set xtick, not minor ticks.

If your data are in datetime format and you want half-year ticks on January 1st and July1st for every year,

% dt is your datetime vector.
% Create vector of Jan 1st /July 1st dates spanning the range of your data.
startDate = dateshift(min(dt), 'start', 'year'); 
endDate = dateshift(max(dt), 'start', 'year') + calyears(1);
dtTicks = startDate : calmonths(6) :  endDate; 
% set ticks
set(gca, 'XTick', dtTicks, 'xlim', dtTicks([1,end])) % xlim optional

You can edit for datetime tick format using

datetick('x','mmm-yy','keeplimits','keepticks')
% or 
datetick('x','QQ-yyyy','keeplimits','keepticks')

Demo

dt = datetime(2005,03,16) + caldays(0:20:1000);
data = (0:20:1000).^2; 
plot(dt, data, 'o')

To place labels between ticks

Since Matlab does not support minor-tick labels, and since we cannot specify the position of a tick label independently from the tick positions, you'll have to use a workaround.

One workaround is to use text objects as xtick labels but that gets sloppy when the figure is resized or the axis limits are changed.

Another workaround is to add a 2nd underlying axis that controls the xtick labels while the main axis controls the xticks. That's demonstrated below. See inline comments for details.

% Create demo data
dt = datetime(2005,03,16) + caldays(0:20:3000);
data = (0:20:3000).^2; 
% Create main axis and an underlying axis to control xticklabels.
axUnder = cla(); % Underlying axis handle
ax = copyobj(axUnder, ancestor(axUnder,'figure')); % main axis handle.
% Plot data on main axis (ax)
plot(ax, dt, data, 'o')
% Compute start|end date, both on Jan 1 of some year
startDate = dateshift(min(dt), 'start', 'year'); 
endDate = dateshift(max(dt), 'start', 'year') + calyears(1);
% Compute 6-month interval date ticks
dtTicks = startDate : calmonths(6) :  endDate; 
% Set xticks of the main axis to Jan 1st of each year but remove labels
xticks = dtTicks(1:2:end);
xtickLabs = repmat({' '},size(xticks)); % to get the xlabel spacing right
set(ax, 'XTick', xticks, 'XLim', [min(dtTicks),max(dtTicks)],'XTickLabel', xtickLabs)
% Set xticks of underlying axis to July 1st of each year, use Jan 1st tick labels
% We also need to plot an invisible data point on the underlying axis to force the 
% xaxis to be datetimeruler.
plot(axUnder, dt(1), nan, 'x') % will not appear.
dtTicksLabs = cellstr(datestr(dtTicks(1:2:end),'yyyy')); 
set(axUnder, 'XTick', dtTicks(2:2:end),'XTickLabel', dtTicksLabs, 'xlim', ax.XLim)
axUnder.YTick = []; 
% Set title and axis labels
title(ax, '9-year trends')
xlabel(ax, 'Years')
ylabel(ax, 'stuff (units)')
% Equal axes positions and xlim so fig-resize doesn't mess things up.
% Must come after converting axUnder to datetimeruler. 
linkprop([ax,axUnder],{'Position','InnerPosition','XLim'}); % add more as needed
axUnder.HandleVisibility = 'off';  % avoid accidentally accessing the underlying axis

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Unrecognized property ‘TicksBetween’ for class ‘matlab.gr​aphics.axi​s.Axes’.

MATLAB: How to write in the middle of ticks

Related Question

MATLAB: Unrecognized property ‘TicksBetween’ for class ‘matlab.graphics.axis.Axes’.