MATLAB: How to show the major grid lines as solid and the minor grid lines as dotted

dwhhggridslinelinestyleMATLAB

I would like to set the major grid lines to have a solid linestyle, and the minor gridlines to have a dashed/dotted linestyle.

Best Answer

In order to change the style of the major gridlines, use the SET command as in the following example:

plot(1:10)
grid
set(gca,'gridlinestyle','-')
grid minor

This example will draw the major grid lines and change their style to solid (using the SET command for the axes GridLineStyle property) and then draw the minor grid lines without changing their linestyle.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to show the major grid lines as dotted and the minor grid lines as solid in MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)

This issue has to do with the fact that major grid lines overlap with the minor grid lines at the points with the major ticks. When you specify the 'MinorGridLIneStyle' as solid '-', and the 'GridLineStyle' as dashed '--', the dashed major grid lines are plotted on top of the solid minor grid lines and thus cannot be seen.

The ability to change this behavior of the grid lines is currently not available in MATLAB. To work around this issue, you can manually draw the solid minor grid lines using the PLOT command as outlined in the example below:

% generate a plot with the dashed major grid lines
figure
plot(1:10)
grid on
set(gca,'GridLineStyle','--')
axis([0 10 0 10]) 
% specify the minor grid vector
xg = 0:0.25:10;
% specify the Y-position and the height of minor grids
yg = [0 10];
xx=repmat(xg,[2 1]);
yy=repmat(yg',size(xg)');
% get rid of the elements in the xx vector corresponding to the major grid
% lines
xx(:,1:4:length(xg))=[];
yy(:,1:4:length(xg))=[];
% plot the minor grid lines
hold on
h_minorgrid = plot(xx,yy,'k');

MATLAB: Minor grid-lines spacing issue

Ben - how are you enabling and disabling the grid lines? If you are checkboxes are named checkbox1 and checkbox2 for the major and minor grid lines respectively, then the callbacks for both would be

function checkbox1_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
if get(hObject,'Value') == 1
    grid(handles.axes1,'on');
elseif get(handles.checkbox2,'Value') == 0
    grid(handles.axes1,'off');
end
function checkbox2_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
if get(hObject,'Value') == 1
    grid(handles.axes1,'minor');
else
    grid(handles.axes1,'minor');
    if get(handles.checkbox1,'Value') == 0
        grid(handles.axes1,'off');
    end
end

We just need to add special cases to ensure that the major grid lines are turned off or left on depending upon whether the minor grid lines are off. See the attached code for an example.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to show the major grid lines as dotted and the minor grid lines as solid in MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)

MATLAB: Minor grid-lines spacing issue

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