How do I use suptitle in my subplot

Hi guys

I'm doing I subplot, where I want to make one "Super title". When I use the function suptitle the subplots gets weird! I have attached both plots with and without suptitle function, so you can see the difference...

 for j=1:length(SR)
figure 
    for i=[1:4 6:9] %Creating row x collums for subplot
        for c=1:8 %Number of headings
subplot(3,3,i)
plot(omega,Sp_we(:,c,j))
        end
suptitle ('Wave spectrum for')
    end 
end

Isa Duran

[dpb]

Don't have it; it's in a toolbox don't have so can't do anything except offer advice.

My first attempt at workaround would be to save the position vectors of all the subplots before calling suptitle and then reset them after it and see if that works ok. Variations on a theme afterwards may yet be needed.

There's a submission on File Exchange that has the functionality with 4 or 5 stars you might look at as well...I forget the exact submission name but a search for "suptitle" did find it.

Ok, the link was still in my browser recall...

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/7772-suplabel

Answer 1

[Cedric]

I usually build the array of subplots by myself in these cases, because I find that SUBPLOT is a bit too rigid. This essentially means placing axes within a figure, on a grid of equally spaced coordinates of axes lower left corners ((0,0) being the coordinates of the lower left corner if the figure and (1,1) the upper right corner). Here is an example.

 % - Define dummy data: 11 time series.
 t       = 0 : 0.1 : 10 ;
 data    = 2 * repmat( sin(t).', 1,11 ) + rand( length(t), 11 ) ;
 nSeries = size( data, 2 ) ;

 % - Build figure.
 figure() ;  clf ;
 set( gcf, 'Color', 'White', 'Unit', 'Normalized', ...
    'Position', [0.1,0.1,0.6,0.6] ) ;

 % - Compute #rows/cols, dimensions, and positions of lower-left corners.
 nCol = 4 ;  nRow = ceil( nSeries / nCol ) ;
 rowH = 0.58 / nRow ;  colW = 0.7 / nCol ;
 colX = 0.06 + linspace( 0, 0.96, nCol+1 ) ;  colX = colX(1:end-1) ;
 rowY = 0.1 + linspace( 0.9, 0, nRow+1 ) ;  rowY = rowY(2:end) ;

 % - Build subplots axes and plot data.
 for dId = 1 : nSeries
    rowId = ceil( dId / nCol ) ;
    colId = dId - (rowId - 1) * nCol ;
    axes( 'Position', [colX(colId), rowY(rowId), colW, rowH] ) ;
    plot( t, data(:,dId), 'b' ) ;
    grid on ;
    xlabel( '\theta(t) [rad]' ) ;  ylabel( 'Anomaly [m]' ) ;
    title( sprintf( 'Time series %d', dId )) ;    
 end

 % - Build title axes and title.
 axes( 'Position', [0, 0.95, 1, 0.05] ) ;
 set( gca, 'Color', 'None', 'XColor', 'White', 'YColor', 'White' ) ;
 text( 0.5, 0, 'My Nice Title', 'FontSize', 14', 'FontWeight', 'Bold', ...
      'HorizontalAlignment', 'Center', 'VerticalAlignment', 'Bottom' ) ;

EDIT: this outputs

Answer 2

[Michelle Hirsch]

This capability is now built into core MATLAB. sgtitle ("Add title to subplot grid") was introduced in 18b. We also introduced tiledlayout in 19b as an alternative to subplot that gives more control over axes spacing, automatic layout reflowing as you add more axes, and support for titles, xlabels, ylabels that span multiple axes.

[Diaa]

In tiledlayout, there no such an option to control the exact spacing between the subplots. Is there a way to do so at the moment?

[Michelle Hirsch]

@Diaa, I'm not aware of a way to do that, since tiledlayout is designed to behave like a layout manager - you give it guidance on how to behave, and it takes care of the details. Could you say more about why you'd like to control the exact spacing? This will help us figure out if we should enhance tiledlayout to support this.

[Edwin Moon]

Hello, is there a way of moving the position of the sgtitle so it does overlay on top of the subplot title? In fact, when I try moving sgtitle using the arrow tool in the figure window, I can't move it anywhere on the figure - it's stuck in the position where the code left it. The subplot titles, axes titles, and graphs are movable.

Surely the sgtitle can be moved to a more sensible location?

Previously, in 2013a, I was able to use 'suptitle (xxx)' followed by 'set(gco,'position',[0 1 1 1])' which seemed to work OK. It would be really good to have suptitle available for use in 2023b so I can keep my original code - if this is an option, please let me know.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks

Edwin

[Michelle Hirsch]

I'm not aware of ways to move an sgtitle. It doesn't have a position property.

There are plenty of copies of suptitle floating around on the File Exchange, in submissions that redistribute it. suptitle used to be on File Exchange. It shipped with a toolbox in support of a demo, but it was never meant to be a documented, supported functions. You are welcome to grab it from one of them.

[dpb]

"I'm not aware of ways to move an sgtitle. It doesn't have a position property."

Another of these things where Mathworks seems to think "Mother knows best!" and hides what almost certainly there will cases in which users have need or desire to customize the packaged results.

But, one can get there; it just takes digging...of course, anything that isn't exposed is subject to the possibility of breaking in the future and things like printing or zoom may not work as expected.

Locally on R2021b, the following is possible

>> hSG=sgtitle('My SGTITLE String');
>> hSG.NodeChildren.Children
ans = 
  2×1 graphics array:

  ListOfPointsHighlight
  Text                     (SGTitle)
>> hSG_Text=hSG.NodeChildren.Children(2)
hSG_Text = 
 Text (My SGTITLE String) with properties:

                 String: 'My SGTITLE String'
               FontSize: 13.00
             FontWeight: 'normal'
               FontName: 'Helvetica'
                  Color: [0 0 0]
    HorizontalAlignment: 'center'
               Position: [0 0.86 0]
                  Units: 'data'
                  
  Show all properties
>>

Of course, it takes spelunking with <Yair Altman's submission> to uncover the undocumented/hidden properties, but it's almost imperative when customization needs exceed that Mathworks has provided. This is particularly so with all the new-fangled customized presentation objects that are maddening in their penchant to be almost or totally opaque.