Using matplotlib, I'd like to display multiple subplots on a grid that has a different number of columns per row, where each subplot has roughly the same size, and the subplots are arranged such that they are more or less centered, like this:
It's a fairly simple matter to create a grid that has the 2, 3, 2 pattern with gridspec, but the problem there is that gridspec, unsurprisingly, aligns them to a grid, so the plots in the rows with 2 plots in them are wider:
Here's the code to generate that:
from matplotlib import gridspec
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
arrangement = (2, 3, 2)
nrows = len(arrangement)
gs = gridspec.GridSpec(nrows, 1)
ax_specs = []
for r, ncols in enumerate(arrangement):
gs_row = gridspec.GridSpecFromSubplotSpec(1, ncols, subplot_spec=gs[r])
for col in range(ncols):
ax = plt.Subplot(fig, gs_row[col])
fig.add_subplot(ax)
for i, ax in enumerate(fig.axes):
ax.text(0.5, 0.5, "Axis: {}".format(i), fontweight='bold',
va="center", ha="center")
ax.tick_params(axis='both', bottom='off', top='off', left='off',
right='off', labelbottom='off', labelleft='off')
plt.tight_layout()
I know that I can set up a bunch of subplots and tweak their arrangement by working out the geometry of it, but I think it could get a bit complicated, so I was hoping that there might be a simpler method available.
I should note that even though I'm using a (2, 3, 2) arrangement as my example, I'd like to do this for arbitrary collections, not just this one.