Matplotlib Fixed Size Axes

Introduction

In data visualization, it's important to have consistent axes sizes in order to make meaningful comparisons between different plots. The Matplotlib library provides a way to create fixed size axes for figures that do not change size. In this lab, we will learn how to create fixed size axes using Matplotlib.

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Skills Graph

Import Libraries

We will start by importing the necessary libraries.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import Divider, Size

Create a Figure

Next, we will create a figure with a fixed size using the plt.figure() function.

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(6, 6))

Define the Sizes of the Axes

We will define the size of the axes using the Size class. In this example, we will create an axes with a fixed physical size of 4.5 inches by 5 inches.

h = [Size.Fixed(1.0), Size.Fixed(4.5)]
v = [Size.Fixed(0.7), Size.Fixed(5.)]

Create a Divider

We will create a Divider object that will divide the figure into the specified sizes.

divider = Divider(fig, (0, 0, 1, 1), h, v, aspect=False)

Add Axes to the Figure

We will add the axes to the figure using the add_axes() function and passing in the position of the Divider object.

ax = fig.add_axes(divider.get_position(),
                  axes_locator=divider.new_locator(nx=1, ny=1))

Plot Data

We will plot some data on the axes using the plot() function.

ax.plot([1, 2, 3])

Show the Plot

Finally, we will show the plot using the plt.show() function.

plt.show()

Summary

In this lab, we learned how to create fixed size axes using Matplotlib. By defining the sizes of the axes and creating a Divider object, we were able to create consistent axes sizes for our plot.