How to remove polar gridlines and add major axis ticks

Question

Could someone please help me remove the gridlines that form the rings inside my polar plot. I'd like to keep (and even bold) the axes and add ticks for each of the axis labels.

Here is the code that I'm working with, an image of the plot, and an image of what I want for the axes.

import numpy as np
import pylab as pl
import matplotlib.pyplot as py

class Radar(object):

    def __init__(self, fig, titles, labels, rect=None):
        if rect is None:
            rect = [0.05, 0.05, 0.95, 0.95]

            self.n = len(titles)
            self.angles = [a if a <=360. else a - 360. for a in np.arange(90, 90+360, 360.0/self.n)] 
            self.axes = [fig.add_axes(rect, projection="polar", label="axes%d" % i) 
                             for i in range(self.n)]

            self.ax = self.axes[0]
            self.ax.set_thetagrids(self.angles, labels=titles, fontsize=12, weight="bold")

            for ax in self.axes[1:]:
                ax.patch.set_visible(False)
                ax.grid("off")
                ax.xaxis.set_visible(False)            

            for ax, angle, label in zip(self.axes, self.angles, labels):
                ax.set_rgrids(range(1, 7), labels=label, angle=angle, fontsize=12)
                ax.spines["polar"].set_visible(False)
                ax.set_ylim(0, 6)  

    def plot(self, values, *args, **kw):
        angle = np.deg2rad(np.r_[self.angles, self.angles[0]])
        values = np.r_[values, values[0]]
        self.ax.plot(angle, values, *args, **kw)

fig = pl.figure(figsize=(20, 20))

titles = [
"Canada", "Australia",
"New Zealand", "Japan", "China", "USA", "Mexico", "Finland", "Doha" 
]

labels = [
list("abcde"), list("12345"), list("uvwxy"), 
[" ", " ", "$156", "$158", "$160"],
list("jklmn"), list("asdfg"), list("qwert"), [" ", "4.3", "4.4", "4.5", "4.6"], list("abcde")
]

radar = Radar(fig, titles, labels)
radar.plot([1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 5, 3, 3, 2],  "--", lw=1, color="b", alpha=.5, label="USA 2014")
radar.plot([2.3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2],"-", lw=1, color="r", alpha=.5, label="2014")
radar.plot([3, 4, 3, 4, 2, 2, 1, 3, 2], "-", lw=1, color="g", alpha=.5, label="2013")
radar.plot([4.5, 5, 4, 5, 3, 3, 4, 4, 2], "-", lw=1, color="y", alpha=.5, label="2012")

radar.ax.legend(loc='upper center', bbox_to_anchor=(0.5, -0.10),
      fancybox=True, shadow=True, ncol=4)

fig = py.gcf()
fig.set_size_inches(6, 10, forward=True)
fig.savefig('test2png.png', dpi=100, bbox_inches="tight", pad_inches=1)

Desired look:

Current look:

Mccullers

Answer 1

You just need to set the yaxis.grid to False. For example, if you set:

self.ax.yaxis.grid(False)

in the line after you set self.ax.set_thetagrids(...), the circular gridlines are removed.

Cupboard

Thanks again, @tom. You're killing it! Is there a way to create ticks along each axis for each axis unit (similar to the 'desired look' image)? – Mccullers

Sorry, I'm drawing a blank on that one. Maybe ask a new question, and someone else might have a better idea than me! – Cupboard

No worries, @tom ! Thanks a lot. Could you help me with the axis label padding? I tried using ax.set_thetagrids(thetaticks, frac=1.3) and adjusting the frac but it won't space them evenly. Also, is there a way to put an axis label on two lines? For example, putting New on top of Zealand. Thanks again. You're a magician. – Mccullers