""" ======================================================== Building histograms using Rectangles and PolyCollections ======================================================== Using a path patch to draw rectangles. The technique of using lots of `.Rectangle` instances, or the faster method of using `.PolyCollection`, were implemented before we had proper paths with moveto, lineto, closepoly, etc. in Matplotlib. Now that we have them, we can draw collections of regularly shaped objects with homogeneous properties more efficiently with a PathCollection. This example makes a histogram -- it's more work to set up the vertex arrays at the outset, but it should be much faster for large numbers of objects. """ import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np import matplotlib.patches as patches import matplotlib.path as path np.random.seed(19680801) # Fixing random state for reproducibility # histogram our data with numpy data = np.random.randn(1000) n, bins = np.histogram(data, 50) # get the corners of the rectangles for the histogram left = bins[:-1] right = bins[1:] bottom = np.zeros(len(left)) top = bottom + n # we need a (numrects x numsides x 2) numpy array for the path helper # function to build a compound path XY = np.array([[left, left, right, right], [bottom, top, top, bottom]]).T # get the Path object barpath = path.Path.make_compound_path_from_polys(XY) # make a patch out of it, don't add a margin at y=0 patch = patches.PathPatch(barpath) patch.sticky_edges.y[:] = [0] fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.add_patch(patch) ax.autoscale_view() plt.show() # %% # Instead of creating a three-dimensional array and using # `~.path.Path.make_compound_path_from_polys`, we could as well create the # compound path directly using vertices and codes as shown below nrects = len(left) nverts = nrects*(1+3+1) verts = np.zeros((nverts, 2)) codes = np.ones(nverts, int) * path.Path.LINETO codes[0::5] = path.Path.MOVETO codes[4::5] = path.Path.CLOSEPOLY verts[0::5, 0] = left verts[0::5, 1] = bottom verts[1::5, 0] = left verts[1::5, 1] = top verts[2::5, 0] = right verts[2::5, 1] = top verts[3::5, 0] = right verts[3::5, 1] = bottom barpath = path.Path(verts, codes) # make a patch out of it, don't add a margin at y=0 patch = patches.PathPatch(barpath) patch.sticky_edges.y[:] = [0] fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.add_patch(patch) ax.autoscale_view() plt.show() # %% # # .. admonition:: References # # The use of the following functions, methods, classes and modules is shown # in this example: # # - `matplotlib.patches` # - `matplotlib.patches.PathPatch` # - `matplotlib.path` # - `matplotlib.path.Path` # - `matplotlib.path.Path.make_compound_path_from_polys` # - `matplotlib.axes.Axes.add_patch` # - `matplotlib.collections.PathCollection` # # This example shows an alternative to # # - `matplotlib.collections.PolyCollection` # - `matplotlib.axes.Axes.hist`