planetwater

I recently found out about “LineSegments” in Matplotlib. They allow you to plot “Spaghetti-Plots” fairly easily, without looping in the figure and with comfortable assignment of properties such as color or line thickness.

 

def plot_LineSegements(x,
                       ys,
                       ylim=[0.0,1.0], 
                       label_str='',
                       linewidth=2.0,
                       linestyle='solid',
                       cm='copper'
                       outOS=None): 

    # set the plot limits, they will not autoscale
    ax = plt.axes()
    ax.set_xlim((x.min(),x.max()))
    ax.set_ylim(ylim)

    # colors is sequence of rgba tuples
    # linestyle is a string or dash tuple. Legal string values are
    #          solid|dashed|dashdot|dotted.  The dash tuple is (offset, onoffseq)
    #          where onoffseq is an even length tuple of on and off ink in points.
    #          If linestyle is omitted, 'solid' is used
    # See matplotlib.collections.LineCollection for more information
    line_segments = LineCollection([zip(x,y) for y in ys], # Make a sequence of x,y pairs
                                    linewidths    = linewidth,
                                    linestyles = linestyle,
                                    cmap=plt.get_cmap(cm))
    line_segments.set_array(np.arange(np.array(ys).shape[0]))
    ax.add_collection(line_segments)
    fig = plt.gcf()
    axcb = fig.colorbar(line_segments)
    axcb.set_label(label_str)
    ax.yaxis.grid(color='gray', linestyle='dashed')
    ax.xaxis.grid(color='gray', linestyle='dashed')
    ax.set_axisbelow(True)
    plt.sci(line_segments) # This allows interactive changing of the colormap.
    if outOS == None:
        plt.show()
    else:
        plt.savefig(outOS)
        plt.clf()