Matplotlib

Matplotlib is a powerful Python library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations. It provides an interface for plotting graphs and is widely used in scientific computing, data analysis, and machine learning for creating publication-quality figures.

Useful parameters

This code updates matplotlib’s default plotting parameters for better visualization:

Key parameters:

font.size: Controls text size in plots (18 is recommended for reports when saving full screen plot)
figure.autolayout: Automatically adjusts layout to prevent overlapping elements
figure.figsize: Defines default figure dimensions in inches (width, height)

plt.rcParams.update({
	"font.size": 18,        # Sets base font size to 18 (optimal for fullHD displays)
	"figure.autolayout": True,   # Enables automatic layout adjustments
	"figure.figsize": (12.8, 7.2)    # Sets default figure dimensions
})

3D plot

fig = plt.figure("Figure title", layout="constrained")
ax = fig.add_subplot(projection='3d')

ax.set_title("3D Axes Title")
ax.set_xlabel("X Axis")
ax.set_ylabel("Y Axis")
ax.set_zlabel("Z Axis")

ax.plot(x, y, z, ls='-', lw=2, color='C0', label="3D Line")

plt.show()

3D plot with matplotlib

Colored 3D plot

This is useful for coloring plot with the error

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.art3d import Line3DCollection

fig = plt.figure("Figure title", layout="constrained")
ax = fig.add_subplot(projection='3d')

ax.set_title("3D Axes Title")
ax.set_xlabel("X Axis")
ax.set_ylabel("Y Axis")
ax.set_zlabel("Z Axis")

xyz = np.array([x, y, z]).T
segments = np.stack([xyz[:-1, :], xyz[1:, :]], axis=1)
cmap = plt.cm.get_cmap("RdYlGn")

# Ranging colors
norm = plt.Normalize(time.min(), time.max())
lc = Line3DCollection(segments, linewidths=5, colors=cmap(norm(time[:-1])))
ax.add_collection3d(lc)

ax.set_xlim(x.min(), x.max())
ax.set_ylim(y.min(), y.max())
ax.set_zlim(z.min(), z.max())

In the exemple, I took time as color

Colored 3D plot with matplotlib

Multi curve plot

fig, axs = plt.subplots(2, 2, num="Figure title")

axs[0,0].set_title("cosine")
axs[0,1].set_title("sine")
axs[1,0].set_title("tangent")
axs[1,1].set_title("product")

axs[0,0].plot(time, x)
axs[0,1].plot(time, y)
axs[1,0].plot(time, z)
axs[1,1].plot(time, w)

axs[0,0].set_xlabel("Time")
axs[0,1].set_xlabel("Time")
axs[1,0].set_xlabel("Time")
axs[1,1].set_xlabel("Time")

axs[0,0].set_ylabel("Amplitude")
axs[0,1].set_ylabel("Amplitude")
axs[1,0].set_ylabel("Amplitude")
axs[1,1].set_ylabel("Amplitude")

axs[0,0].grid(ls="-.", alpha=0.5)
axs[0,1].grid(ls="-.", alpha=0.5)
axs[1,0].grid(ls="-.", alpha=0.5)
axs[1,1].grid(ls="-.", alpha=0.5)

Colored 3D plot with matplotlib