How to Add Multiple Axes to a Figure in Matplotlib with Python

In this article, we show how to add multiple axes to a figure in matplotlib with Python.

So with matplotlib, the heart of it is to create a figure.

On this figure, you can populate it with all different types of data, including axes, a graph plot, a geometric shape, etc.

We don't have to simply populate the figure with one X and Y axes.

We can add multiple axes to the figure.

This is shown in the following code below.

>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt >>> fig= plt.figure() >>> axes1= fig.add_axes([0.1,0.1,0.8,0.8]) >>> axes2= fig.add_axes([0.17,0.5,0.4,0.3]) >>> x= [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] >>> y= [x**2 for x in x] >>> axes1.plot(x,y) >>> axes2.plot(x,y) >>> fig.show()

So the first thing we have to do is import matplotlib. We do this with the line, import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

We then create a variable fig, and set it equal to, plt.figure()

This creates a figure object, which of course is initially empty, because we haven't populated it with anything.

So we have a figure object stored in the variable, fig, that is empty.

We then add axes to this figure.

Our first axes is the bigger of the axes, axes1.

The line, fig.add_axes([0.1,0.1,0.8,0.8]), makes the figure 10% from the left of the figure, 10% from the bottom of the figure, 80% width of the figure, and 80% height of the figure.

From left to the right, the values of the add_axes() function is [left, bottom, width, height]

We then create a second axes, axes2.

This second axes is created with the line, axes2= fig.add_axes([0.17,0.5,0.4,0.3])

This second axes is created and placed 17% from the left of the figure, 50% from the bottom of the figure, takes up 40% of the width of the figure, and takes up 30% of the height of the figure. This places this axes within the larger axes.

The x axis is composed of the values 1-12.

The y axis is compsed of the values 12-144.

We then plot graphs of the x and y values on each of the axes.

To show this figure object, we use the line, fig.show()

This works if you're using a python IDE other than jupyter notebooks. If you are using jupyter notebooks, then you would not use, plt.show(). Instead you would specify in the code right after importing matplotlib, %matplotlib inline

This line allows the figure of a graph to be shown with jupyter notebooks.

After running the following code above, we get the following figure with axes shown in the image below.

So now you see a figure object with axes added to it.

And this is how to add axes to an figure object in matplotlib with Python.

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