""" ====================================================== Controlling view limits using margins and sticky_edges ====================================================== The first figure in this example shows how to zoom in and out of a plot using `~.Axes.margins` instead of `~.Axes.set_xlim` and `~.Axes.set_ylim`. The second figure demonstrates the concept of edge "stickiness" introduced by certain methods and artists and how to effectively work around that. """ import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt def f(t): return np.exp(-t) * np.cos(2*np.pi*t) t1 = np.arange(0.0, 3.0, 0.01) ax1 = plt.subplot(212) ax1.margins(0.05) # Default margin is 0.05, value 0 means fit ax1.plot(t1, f(t1)) ax2 = plt.subplot(221) ax2.margins(2, 2) # Values >0.0 zoom out ax2.plot(t1, f(t1)) ax2.set_title('Zoomed out') ax3 = plt.subplot(222) ax3.margins(x=0, y=-0.25) # Values in (-0.5, 0.0) zooms in to center ax3.plot(t1, f(t1)) ax3.set_title('Zoomed in') plt.show() ############################################################################# # # On the "stickiness" of certain plotting methods # """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" # # Some plotting functions make the axis limits "sticky" or immune to the will # of the `~.Axes.margins` methods. For instance, `~.Axes.imshow` and # `~.Axes.pcolor` expect the user to want the limits to be tight around the # pixels shown in the plot. If this behavior is not desired, you need to set # `~.Axes.use_sticky_edges` to `False`. Consider the following example: y, x = np.mgrid[:5, 1:6] poly_coords = [ (0.25, 2.75), (3.25, 2.75), (2.25, 0.75), (0.25, 0.75) ] fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(ncols=2) # Here we set the stickiness of the axes object... # ax1 we'll leave as the default, which uses sticky edges # and we'll turn off stickiness for ax2 ax2.use_sticky_edges = False for ax, status in zip((ax1, ax2), ('Is', 'Is Not')): cells = ax.pcolor(x, y, x+y, cmap='inferno', shading='auto') # sticky ax.add_patch( plt.Polygon(poly_coords, color='forestgreen', alpha=0.5) ) # not sticky ax.margins(x=0.1, y=0.05) ax.set_aspect('equal') ax.set_title('{} Sticky'.format(status)) plt.show() ############################################################################# # # ------------ # # References # """""""""" # # The use of the following functions, methods is shown # in this example: import matplotlib matplotlib.axes.Axes.margins matplotlib.pyplot.margins matplotlib.axes.Axes.use_sticky_edges matplotlib.axes.Axes.pcolor matplotlib.pyplot.pcolor matplotlib.pyplot.Polygon