specific location for inset axes

user_1390639 0
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I want to create a set of axes to form an inset at a specific location in the parent set of axes. It is therefore not appropriate to just use the parameter loc=1,2,3 in the inset_axes as shown here:

inset_axes = inset_axes(parent_axes,
                    width="30%", # width = 30% of parent_bbox
                    height=1., # height : 1 inch
                    loc=3)

However, I would like something close to this. And the answers here and here seem to be answers to questions slightly more complicated than mine.

So, the question is is there a parameter that I can replace in the above code that will allow custom locations of the inset axes within the parent axes? I've tried to use the bbox_to_anchor but do not understand it's specification or behavior from the documentation. Specifically I've tried:

 inset_axes = inset_axes(parent_axes,
                        width="30%", # width = 30% of parent_bbox
                        height=1., # height : 1 inch
                        bbox_to_anchor=(0.4,0.1))

to try to get the anchor for the left and bottom of the inset to be at 40% and 10% of the x and y axis respectively. Or, I tried to put it in absolute coordinates:

inset_axes = inset_axes(parent_axes,
                            width="30%", # width = 30% of parent_bbox
                            height=1., # height : 1 inch
                            bbox_to_anchor=(-4,-100))

Neither of these worked correctly and gave me a warning that I couldn't interpret.

More generally, it seems like loc is a pretty standard parameter in many functions belonging to matplotlib, so, is there a general solution to this problem that can be used anywhere? It seems like that's what bbox_to_anchor is but again, I can't figure out how to use it correctly.

matplotlib graph python
2 Answers

Using the answer from ImportanceOfBeingErnest and several of the suggested links from the unreleased matplotlib documentation like the locator demo and the inset_axes docs, it still took me some time to figure out how all the parameters behaved. So, I will repeat my understanding here for clarity. I ended up using:

bbox_ll_x = 0.2
bbox_ll_y = 0
bbox_w = 1
bbox_h = 1
eps = 0.01
inset_axes = inset_axes(parent_axes, 
               height="30%", #height of inset axes as frac of bounding box
               width="70%",  #width of inset axes as frac of bounding box
               bbox_to_anchor=(bbox_ll_x,bbox_ll_y,bbox_w-bbox_ll_x,bbox_h), 
               loc='upper left',
               bbox_transform=parent_axes.transAxes)

parent_axes.add_patch(plt.Rectangle((bbox_ll_x, bbox_ll_y+eps),
               bbox_w-eps-bbox_ll_x, 
               bbox_h-eps, 
               ls="--", 
               ec="c", 
               fc="None",
               transform=parent_axes.transAxes))

bbox_ll_x is the x location of the lower left corner of the bounding box in the parent axis coordinates (that is the meaning of the bbox_transform input)

bbox_ll_y is the y location of the lower left corner of the bounding box in the parent axis coordinates

bbox_w is the width of the bounding box in parent axis coordinates

bbox_h is the height of the bounding box in parent axis coordinates

eps is a small number to get the rectangles to show up from under axes when drawing the rectangular bounding box.

I used the add_patch call in order to put a cyan dashed line that represents the inner edge of the bounding box that is drawn.

The trickiest part for me was realizing that the height and width inputs (when specified as percents) are relative to the bounding box size. That's why (as noted in the links and the answer below) you must specify a 4-tuple for the bbox_to_anchor parameter if you specify the size of the inset axes in percents. If you specify the size of the inset axes as percents and don't supply bbox_w or bbox_h how can matplotlib get the absolute size of the inset?

Another thing was that the loc parameter specifies where to anchor the inset axes within the bounding box. As far as I can tell that's the only function of that parameter.

user_13906390
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