How can I create a break in the y-axis (looking like a flash; example below)?

Hello community members,

I would be glad to get some help in order to create a break in the y-axis looking like the example below.

I've seen related posts concerning this topic, yet I've not been able to achieve the desired result myself.

All the best,

Max

[Hayden Garmon]

Try checking here

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/3668-breakaxis

https://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2008/11/21/breaking-a-plot-to-improve-visualization/#3

[Adam Danz]

If your plots also do not contain any data below the break point, it might be easiest just to plot your, set the ylim so there's space at the bottom, and then change the y-tick-labels to represent the discontinuity. You can also add text at the break to indicate that there is a break.

[J. Alex Lee]

Even if you did have data below the breakpoint, you could "fake it" by shifting those data up, keeping track of the shift, and "fake" the yticklabel strings to account for the shifts.

[Adam Danz]

You may have to also vertically scale the data unless the tick intervals are the same below and above the break. If data are plotted below the break I would recommend using two axes that share a border. That way you don't have to deal with setting tick labels that don't match the actual ticks.

[J. Alex Lee]

ah yes, that makes more sense Adam! An alternative is to use yyaxis. Of course at this point we're deviating a bit from the original request, and our combined advice seems to be to just set the lower y axis limit to some value other than zero.

Answer 1

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

There are several options on the File Exchange that claims to do exactly what you want. Have a look:

FEX: break axis

Tust a lazy man's advice: start every matlab-programming task/project with a File Exchange search!

HTH