[Tex/LaTex] ny good and complete tutorial for pgfplots

pgfplotstutorials

I'm working on converting matlab files to TiKz, and I wanted to do it as cute as possible…
Can anybody help me to find a good and complete tutorial for "pgfplots" ?

Best Answer

Tutorials

In the unstable version the PGFPlots manual has a section containing step-by-step tutorials. The latest unstable version can always be obtained here: http://pgfplots.sourceforge.net/pgfplots_unstable.pdf

Screenshot of the table of contents

Introductory talk

On the official PGFPlots Homepage at Sourceforge, there is a link to an introductory talk, which was originally held by the main developer Christian Feuersänger. The link is here: http://pgfplots.sourceforge.net/pgfplots_talk_FTUG_2012_final.pdf

Screenshot of the outline slide

Related Solutions

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[Tex/LaTex] geographic maps with TikZ/pgfplots

I've used PGFplots to generate some maps of a local area in the past, doing watershed calculations in GRASS and exporting the vectors as ASCII files, which can be plotted by PGFplots relatively easily. That only required an xy coordinate system (spatial extent of about 100 km by 100 km), and distortions were negligible.

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World map in equidistant rectangular (Plate Caree) projection, with Tissot's Indicatrix in blue, and the Bermuda Triangle shown in orange

The world map is part of the Gnuplot data: world.dat

By setting disabledatascaling in PGFplots, you can use normal coordinates instead of axis cs coordinates, and the scaling factors to convert between canvas coordinates and data coordinates will be available in \pgfplotunitxlength and \pgfplotsunitylength.

axis equal makes sure that the x and y unit lengths are the same.

I've written a key called scale circle, which you can add to the options of a \draw circle. The key will scale the x radius according to the latitude.

What this approach doesn't do is curve lines that don't follow longitudes or latitudes. I'm not sure what the best approach for this is, I'm guessing some to path magic (Andrew Stacey?), or an \addplot expression. I'll have a think about this.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pgfplots}

\begin{document}

\makeatletter
\pgfmathsetmacro\kmAtEquator{36/4200} % Degree/km at equator
\tikzset{
    scale circle/.code={
        \pgfgetlastxy{\x@coord}{\y@coord}
        \pgfmathsetmacro\xscale{\pgfkeysvalueof{/tikz/x radius}*1/cos(\y@coord/\pgfplotsunitylength)}
        \tikzset{/tikz/x radius=\xscale}
    },
    scale bar/.code={
        \pgfgetlastxy{\x@coord}{\y@coord}
        \pgfmathsetmacro\xscale{1/cos(\y@coord/\pgfplotsunitylength)}
        \tikzset{
            insert path={
                node [
                    below,
                    font=\scriptsize
                ] {0} 
                +(0,-2pt) -- +(0,0) -- ++(#1*\xscale*\kmAtEquator,0) 
                node [
                    below,
                    font=\scriptsize,
                    inner xsep=1pt,
                    label={[inner sep=0pt,font=\scriptsize]right:km}] {#1}
                -- +(0,-2pt)
            }
        }
    },
    scale bar/.default=2000
}
\makeatother


\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[   
    grid=both, ytick={-60,-30,...,90}, xtick={-180,-150,...,180},
    grid style=black!10,
    enlargelimits=false,
    axis equal,
    scale only axis,
    width=10cm,
    height=5cm,
    disabledatascaling, clip=false
]

\addplot [] table {world.dat};



\pgfplotsextra{
    \foreach \x in {-160,-120,...,160}{
        \foreach \y in {-75,-50,...,75}{
            \fill [cyan, opacity=0.25] (\x,\y) circle [radius=5, scale circle];
        }
    }
    \fill [orange] (-64.9,32.3)   -- (-66.1,18.5) node [anchor=mid west, inner sep=1pt, orange!75!black, fill=white, text opacity=1,fill opacity=0.75, align=left] {Bermuda\\Triangle} -- (-80.4,25.2)   -- cycle;
    \draw (185,0) [scale bar];
    \draw (185,45) [scale bar];
    \draw (185,60) [scale bar];
}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}