3D Bar Charts in Python and Matplotlib

Key Takeaways

Hello everybody welcome back to another mat plot lib 3D tutorial in this tutorial we're going to be building some skyscrapers not really but that's what it's going to look like so anyway let's go ahead and hop right on into it the first thing that we're want to do is import the necessary Imports and these Imports are going to be from MPL toolkit. lot 3D import axis 3 capital D next we want to go import Matt plot live. pyplot as PLT and then import lovely numpy as MP as we get further into all these kinds of tutorials you're going to start to really just adore the creators of numpy there's so many cool things in numpy that just make life so much easier continuing on figure equals plot figure nothing new there and then we're going to Define our axis Oneal fig. addore subplot and it's going to be 111 and a projection equal 3d nothing new here besides obviously the 3D uh tutorial section um so what I'm going to do here and kind of explain right before I start coding this is with the bar chart it's not the same as a plot like with the plot chart so far we've had an x a y and a z that was it really because a plot is just literally a singular position on a chart whereas a bar chart um really has more than just XYZ it's got like an XYZ and then like another XYZ and probably the best way to say this is like an XYZ and then you've got a Delta X Delta y Delta Z right how much has it how much does it from that one plot and then it changes a little bit to another plot right so for example you've got so if if you don't quite get the Delta part then it's where do you start your X y's and Z's and then where do you end the X y's and Z's so if you're not quite U following just yet luckily this is all completely visual so if you don't quite understand just yet you'll be able to kind of toy around and I'll do a little bit of toying around and kind of drive that point home um otherwise just play with the numbers a little bit and see what like different visualization pops up for you and uh you should have no problem kind of discerning uh what's going on so with that let's go ahead and continue we're going to have these are going to be our starting um our starting positions right so you're going to have X position equals and then let's make this easy we'll just do 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and a 10 next we have y position y starting point point now we're going to do 2 3 4 5 1 uh 6 2 1 7 and a 2 now the next thing you have is a z position now first I'm going to show you guys the literal looking Z position and then I'm going to come through and show you guys from now on the way you ought to do this but in order to understand exactly what we're coding this is what we're going to go ahead and do just fill it with zeros next um and you might know the proper function to do this uhu but I do suggest you just fill it with zeros for now so you can follow along with the tutorial um because Z position does uh matter for this tutorial the next thing uh that we want to do is Define our changes our Delta X deltay Delta Z and so on so we'll say uh Delta x equals um and for this we're just going to say uh one but there is a function for this built in the numpy which you just do np. On's and then you specify how many you want and we want 10 cuz that's how deep our array is so what this is going to do is for DX it's going to set an array of ones in the length of 10 so now we're going to do the same thing with Delta y it's going to be equal mp1s 10 and then we're going to do Delta Z and just just to kind of uh make this an interesting looking chart we're going to go uh 1 2 3 4 5 68 n and 10 and also again this is so it's a little easier to follow along and understand what's going on here if you don't already so now we want to actually plot this so plotting is a1. bar 3D so it's just you know we're going to it's almost just like ax1 plot right it's just bar 3D tells it hey we're going to we're going to throw this funky stuff at you so X position y position Z position Delta X Delta y Delta Z and you could just do this but let's add some color to it make it pretty we're going to say color equals and in here as always you can always uh put in HEX codes so we're going to do 00 C EAA it's going to give us kind of like a lightish blue almost like a c probably and plot show so save that we'll run hopefully we didn't get any typos I hate when I typo charts nope so here is our 3D chart looks awesome now to give you an idea about a couple of things before we change things up um first of all as far as like scrolling around and zooming is concerned it's all the same that we've already kind of covered um so anyway the next thing I'd like to show you guys because I've zoomed now it's not on the bottom let me see if I can get the zero back on the there okay so now let's see if I can get to the point yeah so see this how they line up 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven eight and there is a 10 I promise there it is so the what's happening here this is our Delta variable right remember that that Delta change if we bought back over here Delta X Delta y Delta Z see how we did 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 now what if we did um 10 here and now we'll save that we'll rerun it bop back over and all of a sudden No Doubt this one's messing up it's not part of the steps this suddenly these stairs are unusable anyway um so that's the Delta X um that hopefully you can start to understand Delta X now now what if we're going to return that back to five now the other thing I was saying was about these positions um now normally you would just say you would for the Z position you would use the MP zeros because because right all we really wanted was a bunch of zeros so for Z position and the reason we want a bunch of zeros actually let me go ahead and just show you that let's replace this with a three now we'll save that we'll run it and you'll see one of these yep uh one of these stairs now starts at the three obviously we're not seeing let me see if I can zoom in yeah now we got the three there so as you can see it's starting at three so the z um start point is a three and it's still changing by a Delta of four right but it starts at three and it goes all the way up till seven so just to give you an idea so like if you wanted to do like a stacked bar chart like I mean that's a valid way to do bar charts then you would want to utilize the Z positions but if you're not doing a stacked bar chart then you would really just do mp0 and you want 10 of those save that and you would run it and sure enough we're back to our you know steps our beautiful steps so anyway um that's how you would how you would uh go about doing uh either a stacked bar chart or just a regular bar chart CU IE I I imagine a lot of you guys just want to start at zero for Z but it's really helpful to know that you can start at four right and then you can start building stacked 3D bar charts epic stuff so anyways as always thanks for watching thank you for your support your subscriptions and until next time