matplotlib (equal unit length): with 'equal' aspect ratio z-axis is not equal to x- and y-

Question

When I set up equal aspect ratio for 3d graph the z-axis does not change to 'equal'. So, this:

fig = pylab.figure()
mesFig = fig.gca(projection='3d', adjustable='box')
mesFig.axis('equal')
mesFig.plot(xC, yC, zC, 'r.')
mesFig.plot(xO, yO, zO, 'b.')
pyplot.show()

gives me the following:

where obviously the unit length of z-axis is not equal to x- and y-units.

How can I make the unit length of all three axes equal? All the solutions I could find did not work. Thank you.

Answer 1

I believe matplotlib does not yet set correctly equal axis in 3D... But I found a trick some times ago (I don't remember where) that I've adapted using it. The concept is to create a fake cubic bounding box around your data. You can test it with the following code:

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
from matplotlib import cm
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
ax.set_aspect('equal')

X = np.random.rand(100)*10+5
Y = np.random.rand(100)*5+2.5
Z = np.random.rand(100)*50+25

scat = ax.scatter(X, Y, Z)

# Create cubic bounding box to simulate equal aspect ratio
max_range = np.array([X.max()-X.min(), Y.max()-Y.min(), Z.max()-Z.min()]).max()
Xb = 0.5*max_range*np.mgrid[-1:2:2,-1:2:2,-1:2:2][0].flatten() + 0.5*(X.max()+X.min())
Yb = 0.5*max_range*np.mgrid[-1:2:2,-1:2:2,-1:2:2][1].flatten() + 0.5*(Y.max()+Y.min())
Zb = 0.5*max_range*np.mgrid[-1:2:2,-1:2:2,-1:2:2][2].flatten() + 0.5*(Z.max()+Z.min())
# Comment or uncomment following both lines to test the fake bounding box:
for xb, yb, zb in zip(Xb, Yb, Zb):
   ax.plot([xb], [yb], [zb], 'w')

plt.grid()
plt.show()

z data are about an order of magnitude larger than x and y, but even with equal axis option, matplotlib autoscale z axis:

But if you add the bounding box, you obtain a correct scaling: