How do I get lines to stop extending beyond plot border? (Matlab)

user_10973219 0
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I am writing a report for a class and am having some issues with the lines of an unstable plot going beyond the boundary of the graph and overlapping the title and xlabel. This is despite specifying a ylim from -2 to 2. Is there a good way to solve this issue?

Thanks!

Example of the issue

plot(X,u(:,v0),X,u(:,v1),X,u(:,v2),X,u(:,v3),X,u(:,v4))
titlestr = sprintf('Velocity vs. Distance of %s function using %s: C=%g, imax=%g, dx=%gm, dt=%gsec',ICFType,SDType,C,imax,dx,dt);
ttl=title(titlestr);
ylabl=ylabel("u (m/s)");
xlabl=xlabel("x (m)");
ylim([-2 2])
lgnd=legend('t=0','t=1','t=2','t=3','t=4');

ttl.FontSize=18;
ylabl.FontSize=18;
xlabl.FontSize=18;
lgnd.FontSize=18;

EDIT: Minimum reproducible example

mgc=randi([-900*10^10,900*10^10], [1000,2]);
mgc=mgc*1000000;
plot(mgc(:,1),mgc(:,2))
ylim([-1,1])
matlab
2 Answers

This is odd. It really looks like a Bug... partly

The reason is probably that the angle of the lines are so narrow that MATLAB runs into rounding errors when calculating the points to draw for your limits very small limits given very large numbers. (You see that you don't run into this problem when you don't scale the matrix mgc.

mgc = randi([-900*10^10,900*10^10], [1000,2]);
plot(mgc(:,1),mgc(:,2))
ylim([-1,1])

e13 but if you scale it further, you run into this problem...

mgc = randi([-900*10^10,900*10^10], [1000,2]);
plot(mgc(:,1)*1e6,mgc(:,2)*1e6)
ylim([-1,1])

e19

While those numbers are nowhere near the maximum number a double can represent (type realmax in the command window to see that this is a number with 308 zeros!); limiting the plot to [-1,1] on one of the axes -- note that you obtain the same phenom on the x-axis -- let MATLAB run into precision problems.

First of all, you see that it plots much less lines than before (in my case)... although, I just said to zoom on the y-axis. The thing is, that MATLAB does not recalculate the lines for the section but it really zooms into it (I guess that this may cause resolution errors with regard to pixels?)

Well, lets have a look at the data (Pro-tip, you can get the data of a line from a MATLAB figure by calling this snippet

datObj = findobj(gcf,'-property','YData','-property','XData');
X = datObj.XData;
Y = datObj.YData;
xlm = get(gca,'XLim'); % get the current x-limits

) We see that it represents the original data set, which is not surprising as you can also zoom out again.

Note that his only occurs if you have such a chaotic, jagged line. If you sort it, it does not happen.

quick fix:

Now, what happens, if we calculate the exact points for this section?

m = diff(Y)./diff(X); % slope
n = Y(1:end-1)-m.*X(1:end-1); % offset
x = [(-1-n); (1-n)]./m;
y = ones(size(x))./[-1 1].';
% plot
plot([xMinus1;xPlus1],(ones(length(xMinus1),2).*[-1 1]).')
xlim(xlm); % limit to exact same scale as before

lines

The different colors indicate that they are now individual lines and not a single wild chaos;)

user_124701960

It seems Max pretty much hit the nail on the head as it pertains to the reason for this error is occurring. Per Enrico's advice I went ahead and submitted a bug report. MathWorks responded saying they were unsure it was "unexpected behavior" and would look into it more shortly. They also did suggest a temporary workaround (which, in my case, may be permanent).

This workaround is to put

set(gca,'ClippingStyle','rectangle');

directly after the plotting line.

Below is a modified version of the minimum reproducible example with this modification.

mgc=randi([-900*10^10,900*10^10], [1000,2]);
mgc=mgc*1000000;
plot(mgc(:,1),mgc(:,2))
set(gca,'ClippingStyle','rectangle');
ylim([-1,1])
user_109732190
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