All but one ticklabel are showing up in polar plot

Question

I have a problem using custom xticklabels in my polar plot. I need the exact xtick sequence specified by xticklabels but no matter what I do, the first label for 120° is not displayed.

\documentclass[12pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usetikzlibrary{pgfplots.groupplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\usetikzlibrary{pgfplots.polar}

\begin{document}
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \begin{polaraxis}[
            xmin=0,xmax=360,
            xticklabels={120$^\circ$,90$^\circ$,60$^\circ$,30$^\circ$,0$^\circ$,330$^\circ$,300$^\circ$,270$^\circ$,240$^\circ$,210$^\circ$,180$^\circ$,150$^\circ$},
            width = 0.5\textwidth,
            no markers,
            xticklabel style={font=\large}]
        \end{polaraxis}
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 1

y dir=reverse

In the question Rotating polar pgfplot MajorC shows a much simpler way of achieving this, so my old answer (see below) is left only as a curiosity. All that's needed are the axis options

 y dir=reverse,rotate=90,
 xticklabel style={anchor=-\tick-90}, 

\documentclass[12pt,border=4mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{polaraxis}[
    y dir=reverse,rotate=90,
    xticklabel style={anchor=-\tick-90}, 
    y tick label style={left},
]

\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(45,0.25)};
\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(135,0.5)};
\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(225,0.75)};
\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(315,1)};

\end{polaraxis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Old answer: horrible workaround

---

For a more direct solution to your question, see the bottom of the answer.

---

Here is a different approach, where the axis is rotated and flipped so that the angles are as desired. This is done with the axis options x post scale=-1,rotate=-90. The rotation puts zero at the top, the scaling flips it around the north-south axis.

The other new options for the axis are

• xtick=\ticklist: Because the list of ticks are used twice, it's saved to a macro with \newcommand\ticklist{0,30,...,330}.

• xticklabels={}: Turns off all ticklabels showing the degrees, as these are added manually later.

• y tick label style={left}: By default the "y"-ticklabels are placed above the horizontal line. Due to the rotation they are place by the vertical line, and above doesn't work very well there. Therefor I place them left instead.

• tick style={draw=none}: The tickmarks were pointing in very wrong directions, so I turn them off completely.

Adding the xticklabels

You could add a series of nodes of the form \node [anchor={atan2(cos(30),sin(30))+180}] at (axis cs:30,\pgfkeysvalueof{/pgfplots/ymax}) {30}; inside the polaraxis environment, replacing all the occurrences of 30 with other angles. That is rather inconvenient, and using a loop as described in section 8.1 of the pgfplots manual didn't work in a polaraxis. Instead I use a workaround, as follows.

1. Add \usetikzlibrary{through}.

2. Inside the polaraxis, add two coordinates, one in the center, and one on the outer edge of the axis:

   \coordinate (top of axis) at (axis cs:0,\pgfkeysvalueof{/pgfplots/ymax});
   \coordinate (axis center) at (axis cs:0,0);
   

3. After \end{polaraxis}, add a circular node with

   \node (axis circle) at (axis center) [circle through={(top of axis)}] {};
   

   circle through is defined by the through library. As the center of the node is in the center of the axis, and it passes through a point on the edge of the axis, the node edge will be placed exactly on the axis edge.

4. Finally the ticklabels are added with

   \foreach [evaluate=\i as \j using {atan2(cos(\i),sin(\i))}] \i in \ticklist
      \node [anchor={\j+180}] at (axis circle.\j) {\i};
   

   atan2(cos(\i),sin(\i)) transforms from degrees in a "compass like" polar axis, to those in a "normal" polar axis.

\documentclass[12pt,border=4mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\usetikzlibrary{through}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\newcommand\ticklist{0,30,...,330}
\begin{polaraxis}[
    xmin=0,xmax=360,
    width = 0.5\textwidth,
    xticklabel style={font=\large},
    x post scale=-1,rotate=-90,
    xtick=\ticklist,xticklabels={},y tick label style={left},
    tick style={draw=none}
]

\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(45,0.25)};
\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(135,0.5)};
\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(225,0.75)};
\addplot+ [very thick, polar comb] coordinates {(315,1)};

\coordinate (top of axis) at (axis cs:0,\pgfkeysvalueof{/pgfplots/ymax});
\coordinate (axis center) at (axis cs:0,0);
\end{polaraxis}
\node (axis circle) at (axis center) [circle through={(top of axis)}] {};
\foreach [evaluate=\i as \j using {atan2(cos(\i),sin(\i))}] \i in \ticklist
   \node [anchor={\j+180}] at (axis circle.\j) {\i};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Wrong labels

The following code seems to work fine:

\documentclass[12pt,border=4mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}    
\begin{document}
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \begin{polaraxis}[
            xmin=0,xmax=360,
            xtick={0,30,...,330},
            xticklabels={90$^\circ$,60$^\circ$,30$^\circ$,0$^\circ$,330$^\circ$,300$^\circ$,270$^\circ$,240$^\circ$,210$^\circ$,180$^\circ$,150$^\circ$,120$^\circ$},
            width = 0.5\textwidth,
            no markers,
            xticklabel style={font=\large}]
            \addplot+ [polar comb] coordinates {(120,0.5)};
        \end{polaraxis}
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

I haven't done much though. The preamble is cleaned up a bit. In the axis options the news is that I specified the tick locations explicitly (xtick={0,30,...,330}), and I moved the ticklabel for 120 degrees to the end of the list. There is one caveat though:

• This only works when something is plotted.

If you remove the \addplot command from the above code, it no longer works.