Question

For some reason, after i add a second y axis to my plot

fig.plt.figure()
ax = plt.Axes(fig)
fig.add_axes(ax)
ax2 = ax.twinx()
fig.add_axes(ax2)

The xticklabels are no longer rotated!?

fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation = num)

Does anyone know why this is happening?

I can comment out the last two lines:

#ax2 = ax.twinx()
#fig.add_axes(ax2)

and it will rotate the xticklabels.

Answer 1

Place fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation = num) after the statement defining ax but before the call to ax.twinx() and :

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.dates as md
import datetime as dt
import numpy as np

np.random.seed(0)
t=md.drange(dt.datetime(2009,10,1),
            dt.datetime(2010,1,15),
            dt.timedelta(days=1))
n=len(t)
x1 = np.cumsum(np.random.random(n) - 0.5) * 40000
x2 = np.cumsum(np.random.random(n) - 0.5) * 0.002

fig = plt.figure()
# fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation=25) # does not work
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1)
fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation=25) # works
ax2 = ax1.twinx()
# fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation=25) # does not work
ax1.plot_date(t, x1, 'r-')
ax2.plot_date(t, x2, 'g-')
plt.show()

yields