Break in the axis

Hi

I have a plot of data points (x, y). The issue is that one of the first data points has a very large amplitude, whereas the rest of the data points have very small magnitudes. So what I thought that I wanted to do is to make a "cut" in the y-axis, such that it goes from 0..1 and then skips to 100..105. Perhaps with a mark such as this "----//----" in between.

Is that possible in MatLAB?

Best, Niles.

[Daniel Shub]

You may not want to do that: http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/broken-y-axis-in-excel-chart/

[Lea]

https://nl.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/42537-break-in-the-axis

yanan Liu found a very good code for it!

Answer 1

[Thomas]

Couple of file exchange contributions

Breakaxis

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/3668-breakaxis

BreakPlot

http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2008/11/21/breaking-a-plot-to-improve-visualization/#3 http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/21864-breakplot

[Sean de Wolski]

Nice find!

Answer 2

[yanan LIU]

There is no direct function as I know.

But you can try to plot the double line on your figure.

for example,

x=1:10;
y=sin(x);
plot(x,y,'k*-','LineWidth',1.5,'MarkerSize',8);
axes('Position',[.1 .78 .05 .05]);
px=[1 5];
py1=[1 2];
height=1;
py2=py1+height;
plot(px,py1,'k','LineWidth',2);hold all;
plot(px,py2,'k','LineWidth',2);hold all;
fill([px flip(px)],[py1 flip(py2)],'w','EdgeColor','none');
box off;
axis off;

Then you can get the follow figure.

Answer 3

[Peter]

Also, check out my file exchange contribution.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/42905-break-x-axis

Answer 4

[Philippe Lebel]

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/3683-breakxaxis

It does EXACTLY what you want to do.

[Walter Roberson]

That's what Thomas suggested 6 years ago.

Answer 5

[Lea]

Building on Yanan LIU's contribution, I explained it more and this is for a break in the x axis.

%Here, Yanan allows us to choose the location of the break. In Yanan's
%code, it is on the y axis, here it is on the x axis (done by changing the
%two first numerical values). Axes basically creates a new very small plot
%(0.05*0.05) at (0.8,0.175).
axes('Position',[.8 .175 .05 .05]);

%this code forms the rectangle for the break sign on the axis itself. px
%defines the x values of the rectangle, py1 from the bottom and py2 from
%the top. height specifies the height of the rectangle.
px=[1 2];
py1=[1 2];
height=0.5;
py2=py1+height;

%'k', the black outer lines are drawn, one with each plot.
plot(py1,px,'k','LineWidth',2);hold all;
plot(py2, px, 'k','LineWidth',2);hold all;

%%Here, the rectangle is filled with white, 'w'
fill([py1 flip(py2)],[px flip(px)],'w','EdgeColor','none');
box off;

%remove the axis labels for the small axes we made, so that you only have
%the lines and the white filling
axis off;

Answer 6

[Dinant Kistemaker]

Here is a version with control over break position, dimensions and angle

figure
plot(1,1)
gap_size = .03;
gap_length = .06;
gap_angle = 45*pi/180;
break_axis = 1; % 0 breaks x-axis and 1 breaks y-axis
break_point = .5; % break position along either x- or y-axis

xbreak_pos = (break_axis==0)*break_point;
ybreak_pos = (break_axis==1)*break_point;

% Rotation matrix
R = [ cos(gap_angle)  sin(gap_angle);
     -sin(gap_angle)  cos(gap_angle) ];

% Rotation correction
rot_correct = (gap_length/2) * [sin(gap_angle); sin(gap_angle)];

% Gap endpoints (before offset)
gap_endpoints = [0 0; 0 gap_length]';
gap_rot = R * gap_endpoints;

% Axis-dependent gap offset
gap_offset = (gap_size/2) * [break_axis == 0; break_axis == 1];

% Assemble gap vector
gap_vec = [ ...
    gap_rot - gap_offset, ...
    [NaN; NaN], ...
    gap_rot + gap_offset ...
] + [xbreak_pos; ybreak_pos] - rot_correct;

% Plotting white patch and break lines
ax = gca();
patch( ...
    'Parent',ax, ...
    'XData',gap_vec(1,[1:2 5 4 ] ), ...
    'YData',gap_vec(2,[1:2 5 4]), ...
    'FaceColor','w', ...
    'EdgeColor','none', ...
    'Clipping','off');
line( ...
    'Parent',ax, ...
    'XData',gap_vec(1,:), ...
    'YData',gap_vec(2,:), ...
    'Color','k', ...
    'LineWidth',1, ...
    'Clipping','off');
set([get(ax,'YAxis') get(ax,'XAxis')],'FontSize',20);

axis([0 1 0 1])

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