PGFPlot formatting help

Question

I have the following pgfplot:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{every axis legend/.append style={
at={(1.05,1)},
anchor=north west}}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
    ylabel=Number of Respondents,
    enlargelimits=0.15,
    legend cell align=right,
    ybar,
    bar width=10pt,
    symbolic x coords = {Very U, Somewhat U, Not U},
    xtick=data,
    x tick label style={anchor=north},
    width=.50\textwidth,
    ymin=0,
    ]
    \addplot
    coordinates {(Very U,1) (Somewhat U,3) (Not U,1)};
    \addplot
    coordinates {(Very U,2) (Somewhat U,0) (Not U,0)};
    \addplot 
    coordinates {(Very U,1) (Somewhat U,2) (Not U,0)};
    \addplot 
    coordinates {(Very U,4) (Somewhat U,5) (Not U,1)};
\legend{Survey Vote \#257, Survey Vote \#968, Survey Vote \#156, All Surveys}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

What I want to do, is have the leftmost group have a little padding before it starts (not right up on the y axis) and the same for the rightmost group, have a little padding between it and the y axis.

I would also like to make the legend just a bit bigger...

Answer 1

To get extra padding on the left and right side of the plot, you can set enlarge x limits=<fraction>. 0.3 works well in this case, but it leads to the bars in the middle of the plot overlapping, so you'll have to reduce the bar width a bit, say, to 6pt.

enlarge x limits=0.3,
bar width=6pt

As you can see, since your x labels are quite long, they overlap, so it looks like you'll have to make the plot wider. You can do that either by explicitly setting both a height and a width, or by using the key x post scale=<multiplier>.

enlarge x limits=0.3,
x post scale=1.5

To make the legend images larger, you can use legend image post style={scale=<multiplier>}:

---

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{every axis legend/.append style={
at={(1.05,1)},
anchor=north west},
legend image post style={scale=1.5}
}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
    ylabel=Number of Respondents,
    enlarge x limits=0.3,
    x post scale=1.5,
    legend cell align=right,
    ybar,
    symbolic x coords = {Very U, Somewhat U, Not U},
    xtick=data,
    x tick label style={anchor=north},
    width=.50\textwidth,
    ymin=0,
    ]
    \addplot
    coordinates {(Very U,1) (Somewhat U,3) (Not U,1)};
    \addplot
    coordinates {(Very U,2) (Somewhat U,0) (Not U,0)};
    \addplot 
    coordinates {(Very U,1) (Somewhat U,2) (Not U,0)};
    \addplot 
    coordinates {(Very U,4) (Somewhat U,5) (Not U,1)};
\legend{Survey Vote \#257, Survey Vote \#968, Survey Vote \#156, All Surveys}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}