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Adjust x-limits to maintain aspect ratio 1#

This example demonstrates how to adjust the x-limits of a plot to maintain an aspect ratio of 1. This is useful whenever you want that one unit on the x-axis is the same length as one unit on the y-axis. This is important for example in the following cases:

  • Visualizing geometric shapes: Circles, squares, or any object where equal scaling is needed (e.g., plotting a circle should look round, not elliptical).
  • Physical simulations: When plotting spatial domains (e.g., diffusion, wave, or field simulations) where distances in x and y should be directly comparable.

We start by importing the necessary libraries and setting up the configuration for the plots.

from pathlib import Path

import numpy as np

import beautiplot.plot as bp
from beautiplot import config

root = Path(__file__).parent.parent
config.output_path = root / 'docs/example_plots'

We define the data for the plot. In this case, we create a sine wave but switch the x and y axes to demonstrate the aspect ratio adjustment.

y = np.linspace(-2, 2, 100)
x = np.sin(y)

We then create a new figure with the specified margins. In the beginning, you need to guess the margins and spacing, but you can adjust them later if needed.

fig, ax = bp.newfig(left=34, bottom=20, top=5)

Next, we plot the data. We set the y-limits to ensure that the plot has a range of -2 to 2, which is important for the aspect ratio adjustment.

ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_ylim(-2, 2)

We save the figure with the standard x-limits to show the initial state of the plot.

bp.save_figure(fig, 'standard_xlim.png')

standard_xlim.png

Now, we can adjust the x-limits to maintain an aspect ratio of 1 with the auto_xlim_aspect_1 function.

bp.auto_xlim_aspect_1(ax)
bp.save_figure(fig, 'auto_xlim_aspect_1.png')

auto_xlim_aspect_1.png