default subplot width sizing ('OuterPosition') unequal

I am trying to produce and resize 3 subplots within a figure. I usually increase the size and move the plots closer together using the axes 'position' (though I have tried using 'OuterPosition' too). It seems that the default 'OuterPosition' width values are not the same for subplots (3,1,1-3) (or others, though I haven't noticed this before). This is causing me problems for resizing. I have checked and it seems to be the initial default values produced by Matlab No titles, lables or anything). How can I make sure the 3 subplots are exactly the same size before I start resizing? (If I adjust 'OuterPosition', then it messes up 'Position'). I eventually need to match the DataAspectRatio, etc for the plots, and have to be careful what order I do axis equal, limits, etc.

Thank you.

Answer 1

[Jan]

The OuterPosition and Position influence each other. For the OuterPosition the sizes of the axes and tick labels matter. If 3 subplots have the same labels, tick marks and Positions, they have the same OuterPositions also.

The only way to make sure, that the 3 axes have the sme size is to defined them with the same size - while "size" can mean the Position or OuterPosition, as you want. But this answer sound trivial, therefore I assume, that I did not understand the problem. What exactly is your question? Maybe a screenshot is useful here.

[baice]

I seem to have got the sizing to work now (doing everything manually, rather than functions) - but I think the problem related to the default 'outerposition' sizing (as well as using axis equal and changing axis limits, just a weird combination I think). For example, if you run:

 figure
S1=subplot(1,3,1);
S2=subplot(1,3,2);
S3=subplot(1,3,3);

 get(S1,'position')
get(S1,'Outerposition')
get(S2,'position')
get(S2,'Outerposition')
get(S3,'position')
get(S3,'Outerposition')

you can see the 'outerposition' widths of the subplots are different from each other - even though the labels, etc are all exactly the same. Do you know why this is? Thank you.