111

I am making a group of subplot (say, 3 x 2) in matplotlib, but I have fewer than 6 datasets. How can I make the remaining subplot blank?

The arrangement looks like this:

+----+----+
| 0,0| 0,1|
+----+----+
| 1,0| 1,1|
+----+----+
| 2,0| 2,1|
+----+----+

This may go on for several pages, but on the final page, there are, for example, 5 datasets to the 2,1 box will be empty. However, I have declared the figure as:

cfig,ax = plt.subplots(3,2)

So in the space for subplot 2,1 there is a default set of axes with ticks and labels. How can I programatically render that space blank and devoid of axes?

mishaF
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5 Answers5

191

You could always hide the axes which you do not need. For example, the following code turns off the 6th axes completely:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

hf, ha = plt.subplots(3,2)
ha[-1, -1].axis('off')

plt.show()

and results in the following figure:

An image of a 3x2 grid of graphs, with no graph rendered in the bottom right cell

Alternatively, see the accepted answer to the question Hiding axis text in matplotlib plots for a way of keeping the axes but hiding all the axes decorations (e.g. the tick marks and labels).

Chris
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  • Thanks - that's actually even closer to my original question. I already accepted the other answer and adapted my code to use it, but both approaches are great. – mishaF Apr 05 '12 at 21:06
  • Cool, that's indeed nice as there's less `add_subplot()` clutter. – moooeeeep Apr 05 '12 at 21:12
  • This is marvependous! – FaCoffee Jun 09 '17 at 16:00
  • This does show no plot and one could say that this is a blank plot. I was looking for a plot which has no data, to explicitly show that there is no data. Any easy modification of this answer, which does that? – Zelphir Kaltstahl Jul 09 '17 at 12:21
  • @Zelphir I'm not sure what you're after: the other five plots are empty graphs with no data, so I'm not sure what extra you're asking for. Also, this is a new question. In the future, please ask this as a new question rather than commenting on a old answer. – Chris Jul 10 '17 at 10:32
  • @Chris, that last blank space is perfect for adding a legend. Do you know any way to set the legend there? – Stefano Apr 19 '18 at 14:38
  • The answer is great but does not work for GeoAxes. Readers are also recommended using axes[-1,-1].set_visible(False) to meet the goal. – Fei Yao Jun 24 '19 at 09:48
28

A much improved subplot interface has been added to matplotlib since this question was first asked. Here you can create exactly the subplots you need without hiding the extras. In addition, the subplots can span additional rows or columns.

import pylab as plt

ax1 = plt.subplot2grid((3,2),(0, 0))
ax2 = plt.subplot2grid((3,2),(0, 1))
ax3 = plt.subplot2grid((3,2),(1, 0))
ax4 = plt.subplot2grid((3,2),(1, 1))
ax5 = plt.subplot2grid((3,2),(2, 0))

plt.show()

enter image description here

Hooked
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  • Wow - that's a nice improvement. So much simpler! Thanks @Hooked! – mishaF Jan 24 '13 at 21:56
  • @Hooked, that last blank space is perfect for adding a legend. Do you know any way to set the legend there? – Stefano Apr 19 '18 at 14:39
  • @Stefano sure there are ways of doing this -- but this would be best posed as a new question, you can even link this answer in your question (welcome to StackOverflow btw!) – Hooked Apr 19 '18 at 17:47
9

It's also possible to hide a subplot using the Axes.set_visible() method.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd

fig = plt.figure()
data = pd.read_csv('sampledata.csv')

for i in range(0,6):
    ax = fig.add_subplot(3,2,i+1)
    ax.plot(range(1,6), data[i])
    if i == 5:
        ax.set_visible(False)
Tobias P. G.
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Nick Hunkins
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2

Would it be an option to create the subplots when you need them?

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("pdf")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure()
plt.gcf().add_subplot(421)
plt.fill([0,0,1,1],[0,1,1,0])
plt.gcf().add_subplot(422)
plt.fill([0,0,1,1],[0,1,1,0])
plt.gcf().add_subplot(423)
plt.fill([0,0,1,1],[0,1,1,0])
plt.suptitle("Figure Title")
plt.gcf().subplots_adjust(hspace=0.5,wspace=0.5)
plt.savefig("outfig")
moooeeeep
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  • I don't think so because there are other formatting things I need to do that I didn't include in the original question for brevity. One of these is plt.subplots_adjust(wspace=0,hspace=0). I'm not sure that would work after the fact. – mishaF Apr 05 '12 at 20:44
  • @mishaF : you can do subplots_adjust() using this approach. See my edit. – moooeeeep Apr 05 '12 at 20:54
0

To delete the the plot positioned at (2,1) you may use

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
cfig,ax = plt.subplots(3,2)
cfig.delaxes(ax.flatten()[5])
user467491
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