# xtick in polaraxis useless

As a followup question to my answer here, I have a problem with the polaraxis of pgfplots. When I try to define xtick, nothing changes compared to dropping the option.

MWE

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.13}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{polaraxis}[xtick={0,45,...,360},]
\end{polaraxis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


Result (with x ticks in steps of 30° instead of 45°!)

With your code I got the warning

Package pgfplots Warning: You have an axis with empty range (in direction ). Re placing it with a default range and clearing all plots.

So if there is no plot inside the polaraxis environment set at least a value for ymax.

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.13}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{polaraxis}[
xtick={0,45,...,360},
ytick={0,.5,1},
ymax=1.1
]
\end{polaraxis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


Result:

Alternative:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepgfplotslibrary{polar}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.13}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{polaraxis}[
xtick={0,45,...,360},
]
\end{polaraxis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

• Thanks a lot! One should never ignore warnings ;) , but somehow I missed this one.... – Faekynn Apr 13 '16 at 22:13