AxisAuto() should ignore invisible plots

[kutukvpavel]

Hi!
First of all, great library, exactly what I was looking for to plot my real-time data! I'm using the latest release version.

I have several scatter plots in one WPF control and I'm able to control their visibility (I've linked Plot.visible fields to some checkboxes). However, I noticed that plot visibility doesn't affect AxisAuto() result. Is it possible to exclude hidden plots from computation of the limits?

[swharden]

Hi @kutukvpavel, I'm happy to hear you are enjoying this library!

You're right that AxisAuto() adjusts the scale to fit all data (even if it's not visible). It does seem like a good idea to update this behavior so it only fits visible data. This could be done by modifying this portion of the code so it ignores plottables where visible is not true. I may do this in the next release of ScottPlot 4.0

https://github.com/swharden/ScottPlot/blob/4bf514cfe65e19d644db25f961a81f30e44caa2d/src/ScottPlot/Settings.cs#L201-L208

However, you can achieve this right away by implementing your own automatic axis function. Here's a console application which demonstrates how to do this. I hope you find it useful!

var plt = new ScottPlot.Plot();

// make a small plot
var small = plt.PlotScatter(new double[] { 1, 2, 3 }, new double[] { 1, 2, 3 });

// make a large invisible plot
var big = plt.PlotScatter(new double[] { 10, 20, 30 }, new double[] { 10, 20, 30 });
big.visible = false;

// set axis limits traditionally (fits invisible plots)
plt.AxisAuto();

// determine axis limits of all visible plots
var visiblePlottables = plt.GetPlottables().Where(x => x.visible);
var limits = visiblePlottables.First().GetLimits();
foreach (var plottable in visiblePlottables)
    limits.ExpandXY(small.GetLimits());

// set axis limits based on visible plot limits and zoom out a bit
plt.Axis(limits.x1, limits.x2, limits.y1, limits.y2);
plt.AxisZoom(.9, .9);

plt.SaveFig("test.png");

[swharden]

I may do this in the next release of ScottPlot 4.0

To keep things consistent I didn't change the behavior in ScottPlot 4.0 but I did do this for 4.1 (not yet released).

The code example above should fully achieve what you're trying to do in the mean time though! 👍

Thanks again for the tip
Scott