How to create Origin Subplots

By | April 23, 2015

How to Create Subplots in Origin

Subplots can be  a useful way to display data clearly. In this post I show you how to use Origin to plot data as subplots.

This guide was made using Origin 8, but I imagine something similar should work with other origin versions.

Plot Your Multiple Data Sets

We begin by plotting our multiple data sets on a single axis. In this example I’m simply plotting the sine, cosine and tangent of an angle.

origin subplots - same axis

As you can see, it’s a bit messy. Definitely a candidate for converting into subplots.

Extract to Layers

With your data displayed on the same plot, select this graph and find the “Extract to Layers” button on your toolbar:

origin subplots - extract to layersthis will bring up a dialogue asking you to select the number of rows and columns you would like to generate. For this example we will use 3 rows and 2 column.

origin subplots - grid setupClick ‘OK’ to bring up a further dialogue to set various margins and and spacings. For now we can just stick with the defaults.

origin subplots - marginsClick ‘OK’ to generate  your three subplots:

origin subplots - generate subplots

If you like, you can leave things here: this is definitely much clearer than plotting all three curves on the same axes.

Tidy Up Your Subplots

The default subplot output doesn’t look too bad, but I prefered to make some adjustments:

origin subplots - final graphTo help keep the tick-marks on the different axes, I’ve used ‘linked’ axes.

Find out how to make a linked axis in origin