Simple interactive plot with variable time axis

I have a plot containing three subplots, all of which have date/time as the x axis.

Whats the easiest way of making this plot interactive, with only the following features:

• change the time axis for all three subplots together
• autoscale the y axes for the data visible in the plot.

It doesnt have to be a GUI. i'm happy to type xlim at the command prompt, as long as i can say things like 'now' and 'now minus 3 days'.

P.S. The data times are always in UTC, which is 4 hours ahead where i am. every single script i write has manual corrections to UTC. is it possible to get MATLAB to work in UTC by default?

[dormant]

almost every plot i do would benefit from this feature.

at the moment, i always set time limits at the start, either in the script or with prompts.

[dpb]

linkaxes will handle the first bullet, plot will/does autoscale by default so not sure where this comes from (unless it's the fact you've not linked the axes and plotted different ranges on them)

As per usual, for more specific help/solutions/code that actually addresses a specific problem, providing a minimal working example including the data with which to run it would likely result in somebody picking up the challenge.

With only the above description, it's shooting at an unknown target...

The last should be taken care of if you use datetime -- I'm guessing you've been/are using the venerable datenum instead?

[dormant]

Thanks.

I'm just starting to get to grips with datetime, but slip back to datenum most of the time.

I'll add to this question when I have some working code.

[dpb]

Particularly with plotting and if you're writing new code, DEFINITELY ditch datenum in favor of datetime and duration -- plot is now datetime aware and that lets you get rid of the very painful datetick entirely -- plus you can then set limits, ticks, etc., etc., directly in datetime values that don't have to go thru the number conversion to datenum so they're also legible as dates.

Answer 1

[Lei Hou]

Hi Dormant,

The function "stackedplot" is designed to plot time series data corresponding to the same time. I guess that function is what you are looking for.

Thanks

Lei