tight_subplot not showing tick marks

Hi,

I'm using tight_subplot from the file exchange to plot 4 similar graphs. I'm finding that, when I run my script, the x and y tick marks (i.e. 1,2,3...12) are disappearing for all 4 subplots. I'm not doing anything intentional to suppress them, but I am using a for loop to generate the four plots, which makes me wonder whether some information is being lost each time I end a loop.

Is there any sort of set command that I could use to bring these back up? Something like... set(ha(1:2),'XTickLabel','on')? (That doesn't work... ) I'd prefer not to have to actually assign the tick marks explicitly, but to get them from the metadata associated with the figures.

Thanks, Jonathan

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

If the plots are sufficiently close together, then the endpoints of the ticks might not be within the axes span: in such a case, MATLAB suppresses the line. This is the same case is if you have given specific axis limits and then you add a new line that starts or ends outside of the drawing area: the line will simply not be drawn. In order for MATLAB to draw a line, both endpoints must be within the clipping area.

[Jonathan]

Thanks for the information, Walter. Is there any way to recover the tick marks after Matlab has decided to suppress them?

[Walter Roberson]

Only by expanding the plotting area (and triggering a redraw.)

Answer 2

[Andreas]

Once tick labels have been removed, I don't think they can be automatically regenerated: you have to add them explicitly using set(gca,'XTickLabel',[...]).

The better option, of course, is to prevent them from disappearing in the first place: tight_subplot contains the lines 'XTickLabel','', ... 'YTickLabel',''... Remove them and you're golden!

Answer 3

[Peter Attia]

I know this question is old, but this had stumped me too for some time. It turns out calling "hold on" before a plot is generated causes the x and y tick marks to disappear.

My original for loop looked like this:

hold on, box on
for j = 1:5
  plot(x,y)
end

The working for loop looks like this:

for j = 1:5
  plot(x,y)
  hold on
end
box on

Hope this helps! -Peter

[Walter Roberson]

The behavior of "hold on" changed around R2014b; which release are you using?

[Peter Attia]

R2017a

[Marc]

Thanks for your comment Peter, its never too late for a solution. Even years later this is the problem, bringing the hold function inside the loop fixed it.

[IFEOLUWA]

Thanks Peter. Works perfectly