Adding shapes

To make your own figures out of basic primitives, lines are a good way to start, but you will most likely need more shapes. Rendering shapes works along the same lines as rendering lines. In this recipe, we will show you how to add shapes in a figure.

How to do it...

In the following script, we create and render several shapes. The comments indicate which part renders which shape:

import matplotlib.patches as patches
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Circle
shape = patches.Circle((0, 0), radius = 1., color = '.75')
plt.gca().add_patch(shape)

# Rectangle
shape = patches.Rectangle((2.5, -.5), 2., 1., color = '.75')
plt.gca().add_patch(shape)

# Ellipse
shape = patches.Ellipse((0, -2.), 2., 1., angle = 45., color = '.75')
plt.gca().add_patch(shape)

# Fancy box
shape = patches.FancyBboxPatch((2.5, -2.5), 2., 1., boxstyle = 'sawtooth', color = '.75')
plt.gca().add_patch(shape)

# Display all
plt.grid(True)
plt.axis('scaled')
plt.show()

Four different shapes are displayed in the output...