Plot inline or a separate window using Matplotlib in Spyder IDE

python matplotlib spyder
pyan picture pyan · Mar 30, 2015 · Viewed 158.4k times · Source

When I use Matplotlib to plot some graphs, it is usually fine for the default inline drawing. However, when I draw some 3D graphs, I'd like to have them in a separate window so that interactions like rotation can be enabled. Can I configure in Python code which figure to display inline and which one to display in a new window?

I know that in Spyder, click Tools, Preferences, Ipython Console, Graphics and under Graphics Backend select “automatic” instead of “inline”. However, this make all the figures to be in new windows. It can be messy when I have a lot of plots. So I want only those 3D plot to be in new windows, but all the other 2D plots remain inline. Is it possible at all?

Thanks!

Answer

Stefano Fedele picture Stefano Fedele · Apr 18, 2016

type

%matplotlib qt

when you want graphs in a separate window and

%matplotlib inline

when you want an inline plot

Related questions

How do I get interactive plots again in Spyder/IPython/matplotlib?

I upgraded from Python(x,y) 2.7.2.3 to 2.7.6.0 in Windows 7 (and was happy to see that I can finally type function_name? and see the docstring in the Object Inspector again) but now the plotting doesn't work as it used to. …

Read More
%matplotlib line magic causes SyntaxError in Python script

I try to run the following codes on Spyder (Python 2.7.11): # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- import numpy as np import pandas as pd %matplotlib inline import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import matplotlib.cm as cm import tensorflow as tf # …

Read More
In Spyder, plot using Matplotlib with interactive zoom, etc

I've recently switched from Enthought Canopy to Anaconda and am using the Spyder IDE. I've noticed that when I plot some data, import matplotlib.pyplot as plt plt.figure() plt.plot(rigs2) plt.ion() plt.show() It shows up as …

Read More