Drawing X and Y axis on 2D plot

Hi everyone,

I have been searching for an easy way to draw the x and y axis on a plot but cannot seem to do it. For example, if I have a plot that has range [-2 10] for x and [-200 400] for y, I would like to be able to draw a line along x = 0 and y = 0. I have looked at certain functions such as axescenter but this draws the axes in the exact center so it does not work for me. The style is great but I can't get it along the axes. Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

xL = xlim;
yL = ylim;
line([0 0], yL);  %x-axis
line(xL, [0 0]);  %y-axis

[David Polcari]

That works great! Any chance I could get the line color to be black? And what if I want to make the line bolder?

[Kevin Holst]

see the documentation under "line"

"Examples

This example uses the line function to add a shadow to plotted data. First, plot some data and save the line's handle:

t = 0:pi/20:2*pi;

hline1 = plot(t,sin(t),'k');

Next, add a shadow by offsetting the x-coordinates. Make the shadow line light gray and wider than the default LineWidth:

hline2 = line(t+.06,sin(t),'LineWidth',4,'Color',[.8 .8 .8]);"

[Sean de Wolski]

xL = xlim;

yL = ylim;

line(xL, [0 0],'color','k','linewidth',10) %x-axis

line([0 0], yL,'color','k','linewidth',10) %y-axis

And for more info

>>doc line

[David Polcari]

Great! Thanks a lot for the help guys!

[AnnArborObserver]

I believe the comments about %x-axis and %y-axis are reversed and should be:

xL = xlim;
yL = ylim;
line([0 0], yL);  %y-axis
line(xL, [0 0]);  %x-axis

[surya chandra gulipalli]

great. Thank you

[Emon Baroi]

thank you very much ...it can help me a lot

[Cody Roman]

Very helpful

[Zhao Lu]

Thanks so much

[Sidharth A Narayanan]

I think you interchanged the x-axis and y-axis ...

Answer 2

[Brian Russell]

Why does everyone give such complicated answers to this question? The answer is xline(0) and yline(0).

[Elie Marouani]

This is exactly what i needed here, thank you

[Sajib Biswas Shuvo]

This answer should be at the top. Thanks btw.

[Brian Russell]

Thanks, Sajib, but I don't know how to move it to the top. I think an administrator has to do that. I think that in an earlier version of MATLAB, the answer at the top was the correct one, but the answer I gave must be a new feature.

[Alex Henderson]

"Why does everyone give such complicated answers to this question?"

Probably because these functions only appeared in R2018b. Still, useful to know they're there now.

Answer 3

[Steven Lord]

As of release R2015b you can set the axes XAxisLocation and YAxisLocation properties to 'origin' to get the axes lines to cross at the origin.

[Ben Ralph]

Dead link now I'm afraid.

Now here.

Answer 4

[Kajeen Hassan]

A parametric equation to plot the function x= 1.5 sin(5t), y= 1.5 cos(3t) , plot the function for 0<=t<=2* pi. Format the plot such that the both axes will range from -2 to 2.