How do I tell Matplotlib to create a second (new) plot, then later plot on the old one?

user_866007 0
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I want to plot data, then create a new figure and plot data2, and finally come back to the original plot and plot data3, kinda like this:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib as plt

x = arange(5)
y = np.exp(5)
plt.figure()
plt.plot(x, y)

z = np.sin(x)
plt.figure()
plt.plot(x, z)

w = np.cos(x)
plt.figure("""first figure""") # Here's the part I need
plt.plot(x, w)

FYI How do I tell matplotlib that I am done with a plot? does something similar, but not quite! It doesn't let me get access to that original plot.

matplotlib plot figure python
6 Answers

The accepted answer here says use the object oriented interface (i.e. matplotlib), which is the way to go. The code for the answer does incorporate the (some of the) MATLAB-style interface (i.e. matplotib.pyplot) however.

There is the option of using solely the OOP method however, which can directly address the issue at hand and allow us to work with more than one figure at once:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib

x = np.arange(5)
y = np.exp(x)
first_figure      = matplotlib.figure.Figure()
first_figure_axis = first_figure.add_subplot()
first_figure_axis.plot(x, y)

z = np.sin(x)
second_figure      = matplotlib.figure.Figure()
second_figure_axis = second_figure.add_subplot()
second_figure_axis.plot(x, z)

w = np.cos(x)
first_figure_axis.plot(x, w)

display(first_figure) # Jupyter
display(second_figure)

This gives the user manual control over the figures, and avoids problems associated with pyplot's internal state supporting only a single figure, such as when you want to return a figure from a library function.

user_36016600

An easy way to plot separate frame for each iteration could be:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  
for grp in list_groups:
        plt.figure()
        plt.plot(grp)
        plt.show()

Then python will plot different frames.

user_37240840

One way I found after some struggling is creating a function which gets data_plot matrix, file name and order as parameter to create boxplots from the given data in the ordered figure (different orders = different figures) and save it under the given file_name.

def plotFigure(data_plot,file_name,order):
    fig = plt.figure(order, figsize=(9, 6))
    ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
    bp = ax.boxplot(data_plot)
    fig.savefig(file_name, bbox_inches='tight')
    plt.close()
user_45178560
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