Change yticks using a stacked plot

Hello,

I am using the stackedplot function to display multiple series of data that share the same x axis. I would like to change the y ticks, but I can't figure out how to do it. In this case, I would like to make the y tick marks go by 4,000. So basically the y axis should have the following tick marks: 0, 4000, 8000, 12000. Attached is the figure. I can't seem to find a tick mark property in this graph and using

yticks(0:4000:12000) 

returns the following error:

Using xticks with stackedplot is not supported.

Thanks,

Clay

Answer 1

[Artemio Soto Breceda]

You should use the stackedplot with an output argument:

handle = stackedplot(rand(5)); % Plot 5 random vectors with 5 elements each

Then you can use the handle to change the properties of your figure:

handle.AxesProperties(1).YLimits = [0 12000]; % Changes the limits of the first plot

or in a for loop to change them all:

for i = 1:numel(handle.AxesProperties)
    handle.AxesProperties(i).YLimits = [0 12000];
end

This does not quite control the ticks, instead it changes the limits of the axis, such as ylim([a b]) would do.

I do not think there is any property for stackedplot to do what you want, but this approach may suffice. Otherwise, I recommend you to use subplot and simply remove the xaxis of each subplot except for the last one.

for i = 1:5
    h = subplot(5,1,i);
    plot(rand(1,5)); % Plotting random numbers, here you put your data
    if i < 5, h.XTick = [];end
    box off
end

Then you can do what you want:

h.YTick = [0:4000:12000];

I think using subplot is a much better practice, because it gives you much more freedom.

[Clay Swackhamer]

Hi Artemio,

Thanks. I can create a handle for the stackedplot and change the limits. However I can't seem to adjust the tick marks (for instance make the y axis increment by 4000 instead of by 5000). I will try to use tiledplot or subplot. If nobody else weighs in I will accept your answer.

Thanks,

Clay

[Joe Vinciguerra]

Stackedplot is comparatively new, and lacks a lot of the fine-tune-ability available in other plot types. But I would expect to see this and similar shortcomings addressed in future releases.

Answer 2

[Adam Danz]

You can get the axis handles in stackedplot using the undocumented NodeChildren property. Then set YTick.

rng('default')
h = stackedplot(1:20, rand(20,4)*1000+500);
ax = findobj(h.NodeChildren, 'Type','Axes');
set(ax, 'YTick', [600:300:1500], 'YLim', [500,1600])

To set ytick of a selected axis number n,

% set(ax(n), ...)

[Clay Swackhamer]

This is great, thank you for the answer.

[Eric Roden]

Yes, thank you, it took me a long time to find this, and am very happy I did!