Change axes position in tiled layout

Hello,

I am trying to minimize my spacing in a tiled layout. As some y axes have labels and some don't, the TileSpacing settings dont quite do the job. Therefore, I want to set each individual axes position.

This is possible with the property inspector by just dragging the axes, so I guess it should also be possible by code. However, when I try to do this, I get the warning: 'Warning: Unable to set 'Position', 'InnerPosition', 'OuterPosition', or 'PositionConstraint' for objects in a TiledChartLayout ' and it does not have any effect.

Here is an example code:

tiledlayout(2,1)
nexttile
plot(rand(5,1))
nexttile
plot(rand(5,1))
set(gca,'Position',[0.5,0.1,0.2,0.2])

Warning: Unable to set 'Position', 'InnerPosition', 'OuterPosition', or 'PositionConstraint' for objects in a TiledChartLayout

I also tried to define the "nexttile" as an object and change its position, but it has the same result.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

Cheers,

Andreas

Answer 1

[Matt J]

This File Exchange alternative gives considerable flexibility on the spacing,

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/3696-subaxis-subplot

Since it doesn't use tiledlayout, you can modify the comonent graph positions quite freely.

[AndreasO]

Thanks, I got it to work with the subaxis script.

I think it's wierd, that it works with the native tiledlayout with the property insepctor, but not with code.

[Adam Danz]

> I think it's wierd, that it works with the native tiledlayout with the property insepctor, but not with code.

The draggable axes borders in tiledlayout was a bug that was fixed in R2023b. Starting in R2023b, you can no longer manually resize the axes in a tiledlayout.

Prior to R2023b, when you manually resized the axes, it de-parented the axes from the TiledChartLayout. If a new axes were added via nexttile the entire TiledChartLayout object and all of its remaining axes would be deleted. Yikes!

Here's the buggy behavior prior to R2023b

figure()
tcl = tiledlayout(2,2); 
ax1 = nexttile(); 
ax2 = nexttile();

now, manually resize ax2 by dragging an axes edge (<R2023b)

ax1.Parent  % TiledChartLayout
ax2.Parent  % Figure  :( 

now add a new axes

nexttile()
tcl  % handle to deleted TiledChartLayout   :(
ax1  % handle to deleted axes  :(

Answer 2

[Dyuman Joshi]

The position property for a tiledlayout refers to the position of the whole layout not each tile, see here - https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.graphics.layout.tiledchartlayout-properties.html#mw_a2d6defe-bbec-469d-9571-f7d2c3d47968

You can use subplot in this case -

pos1 = [0.1 0.3 0.3 0.3];
subplot('Position',pos1)
y = magic(4);
plot(y)
title('First Subplot')

pos2 = [0.5 0.15 0.4 0.7];
subplot('Position',pos2)
bar(y)
title('Second Subplot')