Positioning Axes using arrays

I have this simple code

% create smaller axes in top right, and plot on it
axes('Position', [.32 .22 .25 .15]) 
box on
plot(x, data, 'k')
xlim([-150 50])
% ylim([0.1 inf])
% xlabel('$x$')
% ylabel('$Field$')
% box off

and I want to better understand how the positional arguments, i.e. how

axes('Position', [.32 .22 .25 .15])

works. Any rescources to help understand how these positional arguments work? TIA as always.

Answer 1

[Antoni Garcia-Herreros]

% axes('Position', [x y u v])

The bottom left corner of the axes is positioned at (x,y). The bottom left of your figure is the (0,0).

(u,v) are the width and height of your axes. Width and height are normalized quantities, therefore a value of 1 indicates the whole length of your figure

figure(1)
axes('Position',[.32 .22 .25 .15])

figure(2)
axes('Position',[.72 .22 .25 .15])
title('Changing X')

figure(3)
axes('Position',[.32 .72 .25 .15])
title('Changing Y')

figure(4)
axes('Position',[.32 .42 .55 .55])
title('Changing size')

Answer 2

[Steven Lord]

Position is one of the properties of an axes object. In general for the core graphics objects the documentation pages list and explain the properties those objects have. The section on the Position property includes some text, some pictures, and a link to a page that explains the position-related properties in more detail.

The graphics functions can accept a list of name-value arguments that represent a list of properties and their values to be set once the object is created (or that controls how the object is created.)