Change the appearance of grids in pgfplots

Question

I am asking if there is a command in the pgfplots package that changes the appearance of the grid in terms of kind of the lines. What I mean is how to change the kind of lines. I have read the documentation but I could not find anything on this issue.

Answer 1

As with most of the settings in pgfplots, you can set these things globally in the preamble using \pgfplotsset

For example

• minor ticks: \pgfplotsset{minor grid style={dashed,red}}
• major ticks: \pgfplotsset{major grid style={dotted,green!50!black}}
• both minor and major ticks: \pgfplotsset{grid style={dashed,gray}}

A complete MWE follows

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}

% grid style
\pgfplotsset{grid style={dashed,gray}}
\pgfplotsset{minor grid style={dashed,red}}
\pgfplotsset{major grid style={dotted,green!50!black}}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis}[
                             xtick={-4,-2,...,4},
                             minor xtick={-5,-3,...,5},
                 grid=both]
        \addplot {x^2};
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}