Spine Placement#

Adjusting the location and appearance of axis spines.

Note: If you want to obtain arrow heads at the ends of the axes, also check out the Centered spines with arrows example.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
centered spines, zeroed spines, spines at axes (0.6, 0.1), spines at data (1, 2)

Define a method that adjusts the location of the axis spines

def adjust_spines(ax, spines):
    for loc, spine in ax.spines.items():
        if loc in spines:
            spine.set_position(('outward', 10))  # outward by 10 points
        else:
            spine.set_color('none')  # don't draw spine

    # turn off ticks where there is no spine
    if 'left' in spines:
        ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')
    else:
        # no yaxis ticks
        ax.yaxis.set_ticks([])

    if 'bottom' in spines:
        ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
    else:
        # no xaxis ticks
        ax.xaxis.set_ticks([])

Create another figure using our new adjust_spines method

fig = plt.figure()

x = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 100)
y = 2 * np.sin(x)

ax = fig.add_subplot(2, 2, 1)
ax.plot(x, y, clip_on=False)
adjust_spines(ax, ['left'])

ax = fig.add_subplot(2, 2, 2)
ax.plot(x, y, clip_on=False)
adjust_spines(ax, [])

ax = fig.add_subplot(2, 2, 3)
ax.plot(x, y, clip_on=False)
adjust_spines(ax, ['left', 'bottom'])

ax = fig.add_subplot(2, 2, 4)
ax.plot(x, y, clip_on=False)
adjust_spines(ax, ['bottom'])

plt.show()
spine placement demo

Keywords: matplotlib code example, codex, python plot, pyplot Gallery generated by Sphinx-Gallery