Bars disappear with log scale

Executing the following four commands

Y = count(1:10,:);
figure
bar3h(Y,'grouped')
set(gca,'YScale','log')

gives me the plot without the bars? how could I restore the body of each bar?

Thanks for any help

[Adam Danz]

@wael Ghareeb Welcome to the forum. I've edited your question to format your code. In the future please use the code/text toggle in rich text editor to format your code.

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Reproducing the problem

Well, that's interesting. The plot on the left shows the bar plot with a linear y-axis and the plot on the right is the same bar plot but with a log y-axis.

load count.dat % built-in
Y = count(1:10,:);
figure
subplot(1,2,1)
bar3h(Y,'grouped')
xlabel('x axis')
ylabel('y axis')
zlabel('z axis')
title('Linear y scale')

subplot(1,2,2)
bar3h(Y,'grouped')
set(gca,'YScale','log')
xlabel('x axis')
ylabel('y axis')
zlabel('z axis')
title('Log y scale')

Cause of the problem

The 3D bar plots are constructed by surfaces stored in the output to bar3h. The horizontal walls extend from y=0 to the height of the each bar. When converting the y-axis to a log scale, log(0) returns -inf which cannot be plotted so the sections of the surfaces that include vertices at y=0 vanish. This does not affect the tops of each bar unless the tops are at y=0.

Solution

After constructing the bar plot, change values equal to or less than y=0. In the example below, they are changed to 1; log(1)=0.

load count.dat % built-in
Y = count(1:10,:);
figure
subplot(1,2,1)
bar3h(Y,'grouped')
xlabel('x axis')
ylabel('y axis')
zlabel('z axis')
title('Linear y scale')

subplot(1,2,2)
bh = bar3h(Y,'grouped');
for i = 1:numel(bh)
    zeroIdx = bh(i).YData == 0; 
    bh(i).YData(zeroIdx) = 1; 
end
set(gca,'YScale','log')
xlabel('x axis')
ylabel('y axis')
zlabel('z axis')
title(['Log y scale with',newline,'y=0 adjustment'])

[wael Ghareeb]

Thank you for your help and explanation.

Answer 2

[Joseph Cheng]

While not ideal this should get you by since bar tries to plot the bar all the way to 0 which log scales don't show

y=randi(100,10,10);
figure(1),clf
hbar = bar3h(y,'grouped')

hbar = 
  1×10 Surface array:

    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface    Surface

set(gca,'Yscale','log')
minY2plt = 0.001;
for ind = 1:10
    hbar(ind).YData(hbar(ind).YData==0)=minY2plt;
end
ylim([minY2plt max(y(:))])

[wael Ghareeb]

Thank you for you help. It works.