Setting axes.linewidth without changing the rcParams global dict

Question

So, it seems one cannot do the following (it raises an error, since axes does not have a set_linewidth method):

axes_style = {'linewidth':5} axes_rect = [0.1, 0.1, 0.9, 0.9]  axes(axes_rect, **axes_style) 

and has to use the following old trick instead:

rcParams['axes.linewidth'] = 5 # set the value globally  ... # some code  rcdefaults() # restore [global] defaults 

Is there an easy / clean way (may be one can set x- and y- axes parameters individually, etc)?

If no, why?

Answer 1

• This answer does not work, as it is explained in the comments. I suggest using spines.
• As mentioned in a comment by Czechnology, consider changing the ticks too.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 4))  ax1.set_title('Normal spine and ticks') ax2.set_title('Adjusted spine and ticks')  # change each spine separately: # ax.spines['right'].set_linewidth(0.5)  # change all spines for axis in ['top','bottom','left','right']:     ax2.spines[axis].set_linewidth(4)  # increase tick width ax2.tick_params(width=4)  plt.show() 

• see more about spines at:
  • http://matplotlib.org/api/spines_api.html
  • http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/multiple_yaxis_with_spines.html

Answer 2

plt.setp(ax.spines.values(), linewidth=5)