Making a multi-panel plot
Anonym
Multiple-panel plots (or
small multiples, from Edward Tufte) group a set of plots for convenient comparison. In DG, multi-panel plots can be built with the
!p.multi system variable, or the
MULTIPLOT astrolib routine. I'd like to show how to make a multi-panel plot in NG.
I coded up an example that creates a set of plots similar to those on the
NCAR Foothills Lab weather station page, using an
archive file from yesterday (Oct 17), when we had a windstorm in Boulder. Here's the result:

You can download the example program and its associated data from
here. If I could run a lowpass filter over my code, here's the fundamental structure that would emerge:
p1 = plot(data1, layout=[2,3,1])
p2 = plot(data2, layout=[2,3,2], /current)
p3 = plot(data3, layout=[2,3,3], /current)
p4 = plot(data4, layout=[2,3,4], /current)
p5 = plot(data5, layout=[2,3,5], /current)
p6 = plot(data6, layout=[2,3,6], /current)
Six plots, six calls to
PLOT.
LAYOUT uses a three-element array,
[ncolumns, nrows, plot index], where
plot index is one-based, to organize a multi-panel plot. The
CURRENT keyword is needed on plots after the first so that PLOT knows to place the plot into the current window.
For the details (the highpass filter!) of making the plot above, please see my example program.