Axis Line Styles: Customizing Matplotlib Plots

Introduction

In this lab, we will learn how to configure axis style in Matplotlib. We will be using the mpl_toolkits.axisartist axes classes to add arrows at the ends of each axis and to add X and Y-axis from the origin. We will also hide the borders of the plot.

VM Tips

After the VM startup is done, click the top left corner to switch to the Notebook tab to access Jupyter Notebook for practice.

Sometimes, you may need to wait a few seconds for Jupyter Notebook to finish loading. The validation of operations cannot be automated because of limitations in Jupyter Notebook.

If you face issues during learning, feel free to ask Labby. Provide feedback after the session, and we will promptly resolve the problem for you.

Import Libraries

We will start by importing the necessary libraries.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from mpl_toolkits.axisartist.axislines import AxesZero

Create Figure and Subplot

Next, we will create a figure and a subplot.

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(axes_class=AxesZero)

Configure Axis Style

We will now configure the axis style by adding arrows at the ends of each axis and adding X and Y-axis from the origin.

for direction in ["xzero", "yzero"]:
    ## adds arrows at the ends of each axis
    ax.axis[direction].set_axisline_style("-|>")
    ## adds X and Y-axis from the origin
    ax.axis[direction].set_visible(True)

## hides borders
for direction in ["left", "right", "bottom", "top"]:
    ax.axis[direction].set_visible(False)

Plot the Graph

We will now plot the graph using np.linspace and np.sin.

x = np.linspace(-0.5, 1., 100)
ax.plot(x, np.sin(x*np.pi))

Display the Graph

Finally, we will display the graph using plt.show().

plt.show()

Summary

In this lab, we learned how to configure axis style in Matplotlib. We used the mpl_toolkits.axisartist axes classes to add arrows at the ends of each axis and to add X and Y-axis from the origin. We also hid the borders of the plot.

Axis Line Styles