How to create Double-Y plot where the right side is a "sticker" for where each curve "goes"

So I have many curves (spectra, for that matter), and it is useful to view them in a plot similar to this: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/213411/image.jpeg. The key twist is that unlike the attached figure, the Y-axis "distance" between the curves matters and is different for each. So I'd like to have this graph be a double-y plot, where the right side controls where each spectrum "goes" on the plot.

I've tried stackedplot and waterfall as built-in Matlab functions, but I no longer believe those are tools for the job. Does anyone have any hint what I might need?

[dpb]

" ... the Y-axis "distance" between the curves matters and is different for each. So I'd like to have this graph be a double-y plot, where the right side controls where each spectrum "goes" on the plot."

I have no idea what the above is trying to describe -- how does the RH axis have anything to do with the offset you choose to add to a line drawn with some reference to another?

If the attachment doesn't illustrate what is wanted, specifically, then it's of little help; you may have a mental picture of what you think the result should be, but we don't have the benefit of the inbuilt knowldege.

Sketch out something that illustrates what you're thinking about if you can actually visualize it and post that...then there's a chance somebody might have a way to generate the result to match.

Answer 1

[Avni Agrawal]

Hi,

I understand that you are trying to create multiple waves plot where left y-axis denotes values for each wave and right y-axis denotes distance between 2 consecutive waves. To achieve that you can use the “yyaxis” function in MATLAB.

Here is the code example for the same:

% Generate example data 
x = 1:10;  % X-axis values 
waves = [sin(x); cos(x); tan(x)];  % Example waveforms (3 waves) 

% Create a figure and axes 
figure; 
ax = gca; 

% Plot the waves 
for i = 1:size(waves, 1) 
    yyaxis left; 
    plot(x, waves(i, :), 'LineWidth', 2); 
    hold on; 
    ylabel(['Wave ' num2str(i)]); 
    
    % Adjust the position of the left Y-axis 
    ax.YAxis(1).Color = 'k'; 
    ax.YAxis(1).Label.Color = 'k'; 
    ax.YAxis(1).Limits = [-1.5, 1.5];  % Adjust the limits based on your data 
    
    % Calculate the distance between two consecutive waves 
    if i > 1 
        distance = abs(max(waves(i-1, :)) - min(waves(i, :))); 
        
        yyaxis right; 
        plot(x, distance * ones(size(x)), 'LineWidth', 1, 'LineStyle', '--', 'Color', 'k'); 
        hold on; 
        ylabel('Distance'); 
        
        % Adjust the position of the right Y-axis 
        ax_pos = ax.Position; 
        ax_pos(3) = 0.85 * ax_pos(3); 
        ax.Position = ax_pos; 
    end 
end 

In this code, the example waveforms are stored in the waves matrix, where each row represents a different wave. The waves are plotted using a loop, and the ”yyaxis” function is used to switch between the left and right Y-axes. The position of each Y-axis is adjusted based on the wave index to achieve the desired layout. The distance between two consecutive waves is calculated and plotted on the right Y-axis.

You can refer to this MATLAB documentation for more information:

https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/yyaxis.html

I hope this helps.