Spines

This demo compares:

• normal Axes, with spines on all four sides;

• an Axes with spines only on the left and bottom;

• an Axes using custom bounds to limit the extent of the spine.

Each axes.Axes has a list of Spine objects, accessible via the container ax.spines.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

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

# Constrained layout makes sure the labels don't overlap the axes.
fig, (ax0, ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=3, layout='constrained')

ax0.plot(x, y)
ax0.set_title('normal spines')

ax1.plot(x, y)
ax1.set_title('bottom-left spines')

# Hide the right and top spines
ax1.spines.right.set_visible(False)
ax1.spines.top.set_visible(False)

ax2.plot(x, y)
ax2.set_title('spines with bounds limited to data range')

# Only draw spines for the data range, not in the margins
ax2.spines.bottom.set_bounds(x.min(), x.max())
ax2.spines.left.set_bounds(y.min(), y.max())
# Hide the right and top spines
ax2.spines.right.set_visible(False)
ax2.spines.top.set_visible(False)

plt.show()

References

The use of the following functions, methods, classes and modules is shown in this example:

• matplotlib.artist.Artist.set_visible

• matplotlib.spines.Spine.set_bounds