How to identify which lines in the plot correspond to which legend entry?

Hi,

I have a figure with multiple lines and legend entries as attached figure. Since the colours of lines are repeating several times, it's difficult to identify which line of graph corresponds to which legend.

Suggest an easy solution, please.

Thanks

[Mathieu NOE]

Well

do we really need to see all those horizontal lines ? does it bring any valuable info ?

I am not sure, but I guess we could plot the data differently.

as there is no y variation we could simply plot the y mean values versus the z data (that appears for the time being in the legend)

so at the end we would simply have a 2D plot of mean(y) vs z and no need for this huge legend

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

ax = gca;
set(ax.Children(1:7:end),'Marker', '.')
set(ax.Children(2:6:end),'Marker', 'v')
set(ax.Children(1:6:end),'Marker', '^')
set(ax.Children(2:6:end),'Marker', 'v')
set(ax.Children(3:6:end),'Marker', '<')
set(ax.Children(4:6:end),'Marker', '<')
set(ax.Children(5:6:end),'Marker', '*')
set(ax.Children(6:6:end),'Marker', '+')
xlim auto
ylim auto

and now you will want to zoom in to different areas (the xlim and ylim you have in effect is only the last segment of some of the lines.)

[Waseem Akhtar]

Great! it works perfectly. Thank you @Walter Roberson

I couldn't get the logic though. An explaination would be appreciated, if possible.

[Walter Roberson]

The color selection you had repeated every 7 lines -- Children(1) and Children(8) have the same color for example.

We want to distinguish between the different lines that are the same color, so we want to assign them different Marker, in combination.

There are 30 different lines. With 7 line colors, if we use 1, 2, 3 or 4 different markers, the combinations of colors and markers would repeat after 7, 14, 21, or 28 lines, all of which would be a problem with there being 30 lines. If we use 5 different markers, then the repeat would be at 35 lines, which would be okay. 5 markers, then the repeat would be at 42 lines, which would be fine. 7 markers, the repeat would be immediate. Lowest Common Multiple rules. You could use 8 different markers for a repeat of 56 and that would be fine too.

I happened to choose to use to use 6 different markers, giving a cycle of 42 before repeating.

To set 6 different markers, set line 1, 7, 13, 19 and so on to the same marker (1:6:end), set line 2, 8, 14, 20 and so on to the same marker (2:6:end) and so on.

Note: I just fixed a typing mistake constructing the 2nd marker.

[Waseem Akhtar]

@Walter RobersonGot ya! Thanks once again