XGrid and XTick with different space

I need draw a fine grid on a figure and keep the XY Ticks as the default one. To get the fine grid, I referred to the idea using a fine ticks. For example:

figure
plot( [-1 1] , [ -1 1] )
set(gca,'Xtick',-1 : 0.02 : 1);
set(gca,'Ytick',-1 : 0.02 : 1);
grid on;

However, I got plenty of ticks which are not required. I try to remove the ticks, and only keep a few of them. But I can only remove them all or not when using the line below:

 set(gca,'XTickLabel','','YTickLabel','')

I am trying to keep the ticks shown the way just like generated by the first 2 line codes. Thank you.

Answer 1

[Alex Karle]

I ran your code and see your problem: the high frequency grid lines make it impossible to read the ticks and hard to see the plot.

You should be able to solve this issue using "Minor Ticks", which is exactly what you are looking for--a smaller tick that has no label, but will allow you to manipulate the size of the grid to your desire. Keep in mind that this functionality was introduced in MATLAB R2015b.

Minor ticks are associated with each axis of the axes. So you can specify a range of minor ticks for the XAxis and the YAxis. After you specify your tick values, make sure you write `grid minor` to make the grid follow the minor ticks!

You can find more information on minor ticks in the following documentation page: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/numericruler-properties.html

Here is an example based on your attached code:

    figure
    plot( [-1 1] , [ -1 1]  )

    set(gca,'Xtick',-1 : .25 : 1); %sets the numbered ticks .25 apart
    set(gca,'Ytick',-1 : .25 :1); %same as above
    ax = gca; %get the current axes
    ax.XAxis.MinorTickValuesMode = 'manual'; %say you are setting the values yourself
    ax.XAxis.MinorTickValues = -1:.025:1; %specify tick spacing to be .025 for minor ticks
    ax.XAxis.MinorTick = 'on'; %set the minor ticks to display!

    ax.YAxis.MinorTickValuesMode = 'manual';
    ax.YAxis.MinorTickValues = -1:.025:1;
    ax.YAxis.MinorTick = 'on';

    grid minor; %set the grid to follow minor ticks.

Hope this helps!

[Qun Wu]

Unfortunately, my Matlab version is 2015a, so clse. Anyway, thanks for your help.