# Polar plots, add degree symbol and hide the radius axis labels

I'm using sublime text 2 with skim, on Mac OSX 10.8.3.

I'm plotting microphone pick up patterns as follows:

    \begin{tikzpicture} % p56
\begin{polaraxis} [ytick=\empty,legend entries={Omnidirectional,Figure-8,,Subcardioid,Cardioid,Supercardioid,,,,Hypercardioid,,,,},legend cell align=left,legend style={at={(1.7,0.5)},anchor=east}]
%Ominidirectional
%Figure 8 (Bidirectional)
%subcardiod
%cardiod
%Supercardioid
%Hypercardioid
\end{polaraxis}
\end{tikzpicture}


This creates the correct polar plots, but the angles are without the degree symbol.

How can I add the degree symbol and also how can I remove the black radial line running from the centre horizontally to the right?

• Welcome to TeX.SX. You might have a look to our start page: it will help you to familiarize with the site. – Claudio Fiandrino May 28 '13 at 10:17
• You should improve your example. Probably it's not needed to have so many \addplot commands. Additionaly, this is not a fully working minimal working example, so you probably should use the class article and load the minimum amount of packages to get your code compilable. – Patrick Häcker May 28 '13 at 10:37

For printing the degree symbol in the tick labels, you can set xticklabel=$\pgfmathprintnumber{\tick}^\circ$ (\pgfmathprintnumber makes sure that the numbers are rounded nicely, \tick contains the label value, and \circ is the symbol).

The horizontal black line is the y axis, which you can hide using the key hide y axis.

Bonus hints: Instead of using empty legend entries, you can add forget plot to the helper plots. That way they won't get a legend entry. In your case, you don't even need the helper plots: You can let all plots run from 0 to 360 degrees, and use abs(<expr>) instead of just <expr> to get the same results.

For line plots, you don't need to say color=red, you can just say red.

Options that are common to all plots can be set using every axis plot/.style={thick, samples=100, domain=0:360}, which helps keep the code leaner and more maintainable.

\documentclass[border=5mm]{standalone}

\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture} % p56
\begin{polaraxis} [
ytick=\empty,
hide y axis,
xticklabel=$\pgfmathprintnumber{\tick}^\circ$,
legend entries={
Omnidirectional,
Figure-8,
Subcardioid,
Cardioid,
Supercardioid,
Hypercardioid
},
legend cell align=left,
legend style={
at={(1.7,0.5)},
anchor=east
},
every axis plot/.style={
thick,
samples=100,
domain=0:360
}
]
%Ominidirectional
%Figure 8 (Bidirectional)
%subcardiod