3.24.3 autoscale

Autoscaling may be set individually on the x, y or z axis or globally on all axes. The default is to autoscale all axes. If you want to autoscale based on a subset of the plots in the figure, you can mark the other ones with the flag ‘noautoscale‘. See datafile.

Syntax:

      set autoscale {<axes>{|min|max|fixmin|fixmax|fix} | fix | keepfix}
      unset autoscale {<axes>}
      show autoscale

where <axes> is either ‘x‘, ‘y‘, ‘z‘, ‘cb‘, ‘x2‘, ‘y2‘ or ‘xy‘. A keyword with ‘min‘ or ‘max‘ appended (this cannot be done with ‘xy‘) tells ‘gnuplot‘ to autoscale just the minimum or maximum of that axis. If no keyword is given, all axes are autoscaled.

A keyword with ‘fixmin‘, ‘fixmax‘ or ‘fix‘ appended tells gnuplot to disable extension of the axis range to the next tic mark position, for autoscaled axes using equidistant tics; ‘set autoscale fix‘ sets this for all axes. Command ‘set autoscale keepfix‘ autoscales all axes while keeping the fix settings.

When autoscaling, the axis range is automatically computed and the dependent axis (y for a ‘plot‘ and z for ‘splot‘) is scaled to include the range of the function or data being plotted.

If autoscaling of the dependent axis (y or z) is not set, the current y or z range is used.

Autoscaling the independent variables (x for ‘plot‘ and x,y for ‘splot‘) is a request to set the domain to match any data file being plotted. If there are no data files, autoscaling an independent variable has no effect. In other words, in the absence of a data file, functions alone do not affect the x range (or the y range if plotting z = f(x,y)).

Please see xrange for additional information about ranges.

The behavior of autoscaling remains consistent in parametric mode, (see ‘set parametric‘). However, there are more dependent variables and hence more control over x, y, and z axis scales. In parametric mode, the independent or dummy variable is t for ‘plot‘s and u,v for ‘splot‘s. autoscale in parametric mode, then, controls all ranges (t, u, v, x, y, and z) and allows x, y, and z to be fully autoscaled.

Autoscaling works the same way for polar mode as it does for parametric mode for ‘plot‘, with the extension that in polar mode dummy can be used to change the independent variable from t (see dummy).

When tics are displayed on second axes but no plot has been specified for those axes, x2range and y2range are inherited from xrange and yrange. This is done _before_ xrange and yrange are autoextended to a whole number of tics, which can cause unexpected results. You can use the ‘fixmin‘ or ‘fixmax‘ options to avoid this.

Examples:

This sets autoscaling of the y axis (other axes are not affected):

      set autoscale y

This sets autoscaling only for the minimum of the y axis (the maximum of the y axis and the other axes are not affected):

      set autoscale ymin

This disables extension of the x2 axis tics to the next tic mark, thus keeping the exact range as found in the plotted data and functions:

      set autoscale x2fixmin
      set autoscale x2fixmax

This sets autoscaling of the x and y axes:

      set autoscale xy

This sets autoscaling of the x, y, z, x2 and y2 axes:

      set autoscale

This disables autoscaling of the x, y, z, x2 and y2 axes:

      unset autoscale

This disables autoscaling of the z axis only:

      unset autoscale z