How to use 'tiledlayout' to make multiple figures in one MATLAB script.

Hello,

I am trying to use 'tiledlayout' to plot multiple plots. I tried this with 'figure' and 'subplots'. But I want to reduce the white spaces.

I want to display 6 plots in one figure, and I have 4 figures. I wrote 1 MATLAP script for all the figures using 'figure' and 'subplots'. It gives 4 figures with 6 plots in each figure.

I want to have the same results for the 'tiledlayout' as well. But in 'tiledlayout', the new figure replaces the old figure and shows only the final figure with 6 plots. I do not want to make 4 different scripts.

Can anyone please help me solve this?

Best regards

Answer 1

[Joe Vinciguerra]

A new figure shouldn't replace your old figure, unless you're not making a new figure first and only calling tiledlayout.

From the help file: tiledlayout(m,n) creates a tiled chart layout for displaying multiple plots in the current figure. The layout has a fixed m-by-n tile arrangement that can display up to m*n plots. If there is no figure, MATLAB® creates a figure and places the layout into it. If the current figure contains an existing axes or layout, MATLAB replaces it with a new layout.

Try this:

x=1:100;
for i = 1:4
    figure
    t = tiledlayout("flow");
    for j = 1:6
        y=i*sin(x*j);
        ax = nexttile;
        plot(x, y)
        ylim([-6 6])
        title(ax, "Tile " + j)
    end
    title(t, "Figure " + i)
end

[Biplob Chowdhury]

Hi,

thank you for your quick response. I actually commented out the 'figure' function as I thought 'tiledlayout' would do the same, and both of them should not be used together. I uncommented the 'figure' function and it worked.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards

Answer 2

[Mahesh Chilla]

Hi Biplob!

To display 4 figures each having 6 subplots using "tiledlayout", you can use a nested loop, where the outer loop iterates over the number of figures specified by 'noOfFigures'. For each iteration, a new figure is created with a unique name using the 'figure' command. Inside the loop, a new tiled layout is created using the 'tiledlayout' function. The number of rows and columns for the layout is defined by the variables 'rows' and 'cols'. The 'TileSpacing' option is set to 'compact' to reduce the spacing between the subplots. The inner loop iterates over the total number of subplots. For each iteration, a new subplot is created using the 'nexttile' function. For demonstration purpose, random plot is used for all 4 figures, in case of different figures you can create a function for each case or use if else statements for the same.

The following code will display 4 figures each having 6 subplots using "tiledlayout"

% define the number of rows and columns in the tiled layout
rows = 2;
cols = 3;
noOfFigures=4; %define number of figures

for i = 1:noOfFigures
    figure('Name', sprintf('Plot %d', i)); % creates a new figure for each iteration
    tiledlayout(rows, cols, 'TileSpacing', 'compact'); % creates a new tiled layout for each figure
     
    for j = 1:(rows * cols) % loop to create rows*cols plots in each figure
        nexttile;  % creates a new subplot
        plot(rand(1, 5)); % plotting random data  
        title(sprintf('subplot %d', j)); % sets title for subplot
    end

end

To learn more about the functions used in the code, refer the MATLAB's documentation.

• https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/tiledlayout.html

Hope this helps,

Thank you!!

[Biplob Chowdhury]

Hi Mahesh,

Thank you for your response. All of my plots are unique, and I already had separate 'figure' functions. I used them again and it worked.

Thank you again for your time and answer.

Best regards