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How to change background and outline color on topographic map?

I followed this excellent guide by Adam Symington and successfully created the following topographic map of Sabah (a state in Malaysia, which is a Southeast Asian nation). The awkward blob of black in the upper left corner is my attempt to plot certain coordinates on the map.
I would like to improve this diagram in the following ways:
EDIT: I have figured item (1) out and posted the solution below. (2) and (3) pending.
[SOLVED] The sch dataframe contains coordinates of all schools in the state. I would like to plot these on the map. I suspect that it is currently going wonky because the axes are not "geo-axes" (meaning, not using lat/lon scales) - you can confirm this by setting ax.axis('on'). How do I get around this? [SOLVED]
I'd like to set the portion outside the actual territory to white. Calling ax.set_facecolor('white') isn't working. I know that the specific thing setting it to grey is the ax.imshow(hillshade, cmap='Greys', alpha=0.3) line (because changing the cmap changes the background); I just don't know how to alter it while keeping the color within the map as grey.
If possible, I'd like the outline of the map to be black, but this is just pedantic.
All code to reproduce the diagram above is below. The downloadSrc function gets and saves the dependencies (a 5.7MB binary file containing the topographic data and a 0.05MB csv containing the coordinates of points to plot) in a local folder; you need only run that once.
import rasterio
from rasterio import mask as msk
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.colors import LinearSegmentedColormap
from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import geopandas as gpd
import earthpy.spatial as es
from shapely.geometry import Point
def downloadSrc(dl=1):
if dl == 1:
import os
os.mkdir('sabah')
import requests
r = requests.get('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Thevesh/Display/master/sabah_tiff.npy')
with open('sabah/sabah_topog.npy', 'wb') as f: f.write(r.content)
df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Thevesh/Display/master/schools.csv')
df.to_csv('sabah/sabah_schools.csv')
# Set dl = 0 after first run; the files will be in your current working directory + /sabah
downloadSrc(dl=1)
# Load topography of Sabah, pre-saved from clipped tiff file (as per Adam Symington guide)
value_range = 4049
sabah_topography = np.load('sabah/sabah_topog.npy')
# Load coordinates of schools in Sabah
crs={'init':'epsg:4326'}
sch = pd.read_csv('sabah/sabah_schools.csv',usecols=['lat','lon'])
geometry = [Point(xy) for xy in zip(sch.lon, sch.lat)]
schools = gpd.GeoDataFrame(sch, crs=crs, geometry=geometry)
# Replicated directly from guide, with own modifications only to colours
sabah_colormap = LinearSegmentedColormap.from_list('sabah', ['lightgray', '#e6757b', '#CD212A', '#CD212A'], N=value_range)
background_color = np.array([1,1,1,1])
newcolors = sabah_colormap(np.linspace(0, 1, value_range))
newcolors = np.vstack((newcolors, background_color))
sabah_colormap = ListedColormap(newcolors)
hillshade = es.hillshade(sabah_topography[0], azimuth=180, altitude=1)
# Plot
plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [5,5]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.imshow(sabah_topography[0], cmap=sabah_colormap)
ax.imshow(hillshade, cmap='Greys', alpha=0.3)
schools.plot(color='black', marker='x', markersize=10,ax=ax)
ax.axis('off')
plt.show()

As it turns out, I had given myself the hint to answering point (1), and also managed to solve (2).
For (1), the points simply needed to be rescaled, and we get this:
I did so by getting the max/min points of the map from the underlying shapefile, and then scaling it based on the max/min points of the axes, as follows:
# Get limit points
l = gpd.read_file('param_geo/sabah.shp')['geometry'].bounds
lat_min,lat_max,lon_min,lon_max = l['miny'].iloc[0], l['maxy'].iloc[0], l['minx'].iloc[0], l['maxx'].iloc[0]
xmin,xmax = ax.get_xlim()
ymin,ymax = ax.get_ylim()
# Load coordinates of schools in Sabah and rescale
crs={'init':'epsg:4326'}
sch = pd.read_csv('sabah/sabah_schools.csv',usecols=['lat','lon'])
sch.lat = ymin + (sch.lat - lat_min)/(lat_max - lat_min) * (ymax - ymin)
sch.lon = xmin + (sch.lon - lon_min)/(lon_max - lon_min) * (xmax - xmin)
For (2), the grey background is coming from the fact that the hillshade array has values outside the map area which are being mapped to grey. To remove the grey, we need to nullify these values.
In this specific case, we can leverage on the fact that we know the top right corner of this map is "outside" the map (every country in the world will have at least one corner for which this is true, because no country is a perfect square):
top_right = hillshade[0,-1]
hillshade[hillshade == top_right] = np.nan
And voila, a beautiful white background:
For (3), I suspect it requires us to rescale the Polygon from the shapefile in a manner similar to how we rescaled the coordinates.

How can I cut a piece away from a plot and set the point I need to zero?

In my work I have the task to read in a CSV file and do calculations with it. The CSV file consists of 9 different columns and about 150 lines with different values acquired from sensors. First the horizontal acceleration was determined, from which the distance was derived by double integration. This represents the lower plot of the two plots in the picture. The upper plot represents the so-called force data. The orange graph shows the plot over the 9th column of the CSV file and the blue graph shows the plot over the 7th column of the CSV file.
As you can see I have drawn two vertical lines in the lower plot in the picture. These lines represent the x-value, which in the upper plot is the global minimum of the orange function and the intersection with the blue function. Now I want to do the following, but I need some help: While I want the intersection point between the first vertical line and the graph to be (0,0), i.e. the function has to be moved down. How do I achieve this? Furthermore, the piece of the function before this first intersection point (shown in purple) should be omitted, so that the function really only starts at this point. How can I do this?
In the following picture I try to demonstrate how I would like to do that:
If you need my code, here you can see it:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import math as m
import loaddataa as ld
import scipy.integrate as inte
from scipy.signal import find_peaks
import pandas as pd
import os
# Loading of the values
print(os.path.realpath(__file__))
a,b = os.path.split(os.path.realpath(__file__))
print(os.chdir(a))
print(os.chdir('..'))
print(os.chdir('..'))
path=os.getcwd()
path=path+"\\Data\\1 Fabienne\\Test1\\left foot\\50cm"
print(path)
dataListStride = ld.loadData(path)
indexStrideData = 0
strideData = dataListStride[indexStrideData]
#%%Calculation of the horizontal acceleration
def horizontal(yAngle, yAcceleration, xAcceleration):
a = ((m.cos(m.radians(yAngle)))*yAcceleration)-((m.sin(m.radians(yAngle)))*xAcceleration)
return a
resultsHorizontal = list()
for i in range (len(strideData)):
strideData_yAngle = strideData.to_numpy()[i, 2]
strideData_xAcceleration = strideData.to_numpy()[i, 4]
strideData_yAcceleration = strideData.to_numpy()[i, 5]
resultsHorizontal.append(horizontal(strideData_yAngle, strideData_yAcceleration, strideData_xAcceleration))
resultsHorizontal.insert(0, 0)
#plt.plot(x_values, resultsHorizontal)
#%%
#x-axis "convert" into time: 100 Hertz makes 0.01 seconds
scale_factor = 0.01
x_values = np.arange(len(resultsHorizontal)) * scale_factor
#Calculation of the global high and low points
heel_one=pd.Series(strideData.iloc[:,7])
plt.scatter(heel_one.idxmax()*scale_factor,heel_one.max(), color='red')
plt.scatter(heel_one.idxmin()*scale_factor,heel_one.min(), color='blue')
heel_two=pd.Series(strideData.iloc[:,9])
plt.scatter(heel_two.idxmax()*scale_factor,heel_two.max(), color='orange')
plt.scatter(heel_two.idxmin()*scale_factor,heel_two.min(), color='green')#!
#Plot of force data
plt.plot(x_values[:-1],strideData.iloc[:,7]) #force heel
plt.plot(x_values[:-1],strideData.iloc[:,9]) #force toe
# while - loop to calculate the point of intersection with the blue function
i = heel_one.idxmax()
while strideData.iloc[i,7] > strideData.iloc[i,9]:
i = i-1
# Length calculation between global minimum orange function and intersection with blue function
laenge=(i-heel_two.idxmin())*scale_factor
print(laenge)
#%% Integration of horizontal acceleration
velocity = inte.cumtrapz(resultsHorizontal,x_values)
plt.plot(x_values[:-1], velocity)
#%% Integration of the velocity
s = inte.cumtrapz(velocity, x_values[:-1])
plt.plot(x_values[:-2],s)
I hope it's clear what I want to do. Thanks for helping me!

I didn't dig all the way through your code, but the following tricks may be useful.
Say you have x and y values:
x = np.linspace(0,3,100)
y = x**2
Now, you only want the values corresponding to, say, .5 < x < 1.5. First, create a boolean mask for the arrays as follows:
mask = np.logical_and(.5 < x, x < 1.5)
(If this seems magical, then run x < 1.5 in your interpreter and observe the results).
Then use this mask to select your desired x and y values:
x_masked = x[mask]
y_masked = y[mask]
Then, you can translate all these values so that the first x,y pair is at the origin:
x_translated = x_masked - x_masked[0]
y_translated = y_masked - y_masked[0]
Is this the type of thing you were looking for?

Finding neighbourhoods (cliques) in street data (a graph)

I am looking for a way to automatically define neighbourhoods in cities as polygons on a graph.
My definition of a neighbourhood has two parts:
A block: An area inclosed between a number of streets, where the number of streets (edges) and intersections (nodes) is a minimum of three (a triangle).
A neighbourhood: For any given block, all the blocks directly adjacent to that block and the block itself.
See this illustration for an example:
E.g. B4 is block defined by 7 nodes and 6 edges connecting them. As most of the examples here, the other blocks are defined by 4 nodes and 4 edges connecting them. Also, the neighbourhood of B1 includes B2 (and vice versa) while B2 also includes B3.
I am using osmnx to get street data from OSM.
Using osmnx and networkx, how can I traverse a graph to find the nodes and edges that define each block?
For each block, how can I find the adjacent blocks?
I am working myself towards a piece of code that takes a graph and a pair of coordinates (latitude, longitude) as input, identifies the relevant block and returns the polygon for that block and the neighbourhood as defined above.
Here is the code used to make the map:
import osmnx as ox
import networkx as nx
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
G = ox.graph_from_address('Nørrebrogade 20, Copenhagen Municipality',
network_type='all',
distance=500)
and my attempt at finding cliques with different number of nodes and degrees.
def plot_cliques(graph, number_of_nodes, degree):
ug = ox.save_load.get_undirected(graph)
cliques = nx.find_cliques(ug)
cliques_nodes = [clq for clq in cliques if len(clq) >= number_of_nodes]
print("{} cliques with more than {} nodes.".format(len(cliques_nodes), number_of_nodes))
nodes = set(n for clq in cliques_nodes for n in clq)
h = ug.subgraph(nodes)
deg = nx.degree(h)
nodes_degree = [n for n in nodes if deg[n] >= degree]
k = h.subgraph(nodes_degree)
nx.draw(k, node_size=5)
Theory that might be relevant:
Enumerating All Cycles in an Undirected Graph

Finding city blocks using the graph is surprisingly non-trivial.
Basically, this amounts to finding the smallest set of smallest rings (SSSR), which is an NP-complete problem.
A review of this problem (and related problems) can be found here.
On SO, there is one description of an algorithm to solve it here.
As far as I can tell, there is no corresponding implementation in networkx (or in python for that matter).
I tried this approach briefly and then abandoned it -- my brain is not up to scratch for that kind of work today.
That being said, I will award a bounty to anybody that might visit this page at a later date and post a tested implementation of an algorithm that finds the SSSR in python.
I have instead pursued a different approach, leveraging the fact that the graph is guaranteed to be planar.
Briefly, instead of treating this as a graph problem, we treat this as an image segmentation problem.
First, we find all connected regions in the image. We then determine the contour around each region,
transform the contours in image coordinates back to longitudes and latitudes.
Given the following imports and function definitions:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8
"""
Find house blocks in osmnx graphs.
"""
import numpy as np
import osmnx as ox
import networkx as nx
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.path import Path
from matplotlib.patches import PathPatch
from matplotlib.backends.backend_agg import FigureCanvasAgg as FigureCanvas
from skimage.measure import label, find_contours, points_in_poly
from skimage.color import label2rgb
ox.config(log_console=True, use_cache=True)
def k_core(G, k):
H = nx.Graph(G, as_view=True)
H.remove_edges_from(nx.selfloop_edges(H))
core_nodes = nx.k_core(H, k)
H = H.subgraph(core_nodes)
return G.subgraph(core_nodes)
def plot2img(fig):
# remove margins
fig.subplots_adjust(left=0, bottom=0, right=1, top=1, wspace=0, hspace=0)
# convert to image
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/35362787/2912349
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/54334430/2912349
canvas = FigureCanvas(fig)
canvas.draw()
img_as_string, (width, height) = canvas.print_to_buffer()
as_rgba = np.fromstring(img_as_string, dtype='uint8').reshape((height, width, 4))
return as_rgba[:,:,:3]
Load the data. Do cache the imports, if testing this repeatedly -- otherwise your account can get banned.
Speaking from experience here.
G = ox.graph_from_address('Nørrebrogade 20, Copenhagen Municipality',
network_type='all', distance=500)
G_projected = ox.project_graph(G)
ox.save_graphml(G_projected, filename='network.graphml')
# G = ox.load_graphml('network.graphml')
Prune nodes and edges that cannot be part of a cycle.
This step is not strictly necessary but results in nicer contours.
H = k_core(G, 2)
fig1, ax1 = ox.plot_graph(H, node_size=0, edge_color='k', edge_linewidth=1)
Convert plot to image and find connected regions:
img = plot2img(fig1)
label_image = label(img > 128)
image_label_overlay = label2rgb(label_image[:,:,0], image=img[:,:,0])
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,1)
ax.imshow(image_label_overlay)
For each labelled region, find the contour and convert the contour pixel coordinates back to data coordinates.
# using a large region here as an example;
# however we could also loop over all unique labels, i.e.
# for ii in np.unique(labels.ravel()):
ii = np.argsort(np.bincount(label_image.ravel()))[-5]
mask = (label_image[:,:,0] == ii)
contours = find_contours(mask.astype(np.float), 0.5)
# Select the largest contiguous contour
contour = sorted(contours, key=lambda x: len(x))[-1]
# display the image and plot the contour;
# this allows us to transform the contour coordinates back to the original data cordinates
fig2, ax2 = plt.subplots()
ax2.imshow(mask, interpolation='nearest', cmap='gray')
ax2.autoscale(enable=False)
ax2.step(contour.T[1], contour.T[0], linewidth=2, c='r')
plt.close(fig2)
# first column indexes rows in images, second column indexes columns;
# therefor we need to swap contour array to get xy values
contour = np.fliplr(contour)
pixel_to_data = ax2.transData + ax2.transAxes.inverted() + ax1.transAxes + ax1.transData.inverted()
transformed_contour = pixel_to_data.transform(contour)
transformed_contour_path = Path(transformed_contour, closed=True)
patch = PathPatch(transformed_contour_path, facecolor='red')
ax1.add_patch(patch)
Determine all points in the original graph that fall inside (or on) the contour.
x = G.nodes.data('x')
y = G.nodes.data('y')
xy = np.array([(x[node], y[node]) for node in G.nodes])
eps = (xy.max(axis=0) - xy.min(axis=0)).mean() / 100
is_inside = transformed_contour_path.contains_points(xy, radius=-eps)
nodes_inside_block = [node for node, flag in zip(G.nodes, is_inside) if flag]
node_size = [50 if node in nodes_inside_block else 0 for node in G.nodes]
node_color = ['r' if node in nodes_inside_block else 'k' for node in G.nodes]
fig3, ax3 = ox.plot_graph(G, node_color=node_color, node_size=node_size)
Figuring out if two blocks are neighbors is pretty easy. Just check if they share a node:
if set(nodes_inside_block_1) & set(nodes_inside_block_2): # empty set evaluates to False
print("Blocks are neighbors.")

I'm not completely sure that cycle_basis will give you the neighborhoods you seek, but if it does, it's a simple thing to get the neighborhood graph from it:
import osmnx as ox
import networkx as nx
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
G = ox.graph_from_address('Nørrebrogade 20, Copenhagen Municipality',
network_type='all',
distance=500)
H = nx.Graph(G) # make a simple undirected graph from G
cycles = nx.cycles.cycle_basis(H) # I think a cycle basis should get all the neighborhoods, except
# we'll need to filter the cycles that are too small.
cycles = [set(cycle) for cycle in cycles if len(cycle) > 2] # Turn the lists into sets for next loop.
# We can create a new graph where the nodes are neighborhoods and two neighborhoods are connected if
# they are adjacent:
I = nx.Graph()
for i, n in enumerate(cycles):
for j, m in enumerate(cycles[i + 1:], start=i + 1):
if not n.isdisjoint(m):
I.add_edge(i, j)

I appreciate this question is a little bit old now but I have an alternative approach that is relatively straighforward - it does require stepping away from networkx for a moment though.
Creating the blocks
Get the projected graph:
import osmnx as ox
import geopandas as gpd
from shapely.ops import polygonize
G = ox.graph_from_address('Nørrebrogade 20, Copenhagen Municipality',
network_type='all',
dist=500)
G_projected = ox.project_graph(G)
Convert the graph to undirected - this removes duplicate edges that would cause the subsequent polygonization to fail:
G_undirected = G_projected.to_undirected()
Extract just the edges into a GeoPandas GeoDataFrame:
G_edges_as_gdf = ox.graph_to_gdfs(G_undirected, nodes=False, edges=True)
Use polygonize from shapely.ops on the edges to create the block faces and then use these as the geometry in a new GeoDataFrame:
block_faces = list(polygonize(G_edges_as_gdf['geometry']))
blocks = gpd.GeoDataFrame(geometry=block_faces)
Plot the result:
ax = G_edges_as_gdf.plot(figsize=(10,10), color='red', zorder=0)
blocks.plot(ax=ax, facecolor='gainsboro', edgecolor='k', linewidth=2, alpha=0.5, zorder=1)
blocks created from line fragments by shapely.ops.polygonize()
Finding neighbors
PySAL does a great job of this with its spatial weights see https://pysal.org/notebooks/lib/libpysal/weights.html for further information. libpysal can be installed from conda-forge.
Here we use Rook weights to identify blocks that share an edge as in the original question. Queen weights would also include those that only share a node (i.e. meet at a street junction)
from libpysal.weights import Rook # Queen, KNN also available
w_rook = Rook.from_dataframe(blocks)
The spatial weights are just for the neighbours so we need to append the original block (index number 18 here just as an example):
block = 18
neighbors = w_rook.neighbors[block]
neighbors.append(block)
neighbors
Then we can plot using neighbors as a filter:
ax = blocks.plot(figsize=(10,10), facecolor='gainsboro', edgecolor='black')
blocks[blocks.index.isin(neighbors)].plot(ax=ax, color='red', alpha=0.5)
neighboring blocks highlighted on top of all blocks
Notes
This doesn't resolve the sliver polygons caused by multiple road centre lines and it can be challenging to resolve ambiguities caused by pedestrianised streets and footpaths - presumably a pedestrianised street is a legitimate division between blocks but a footpath may not be.
From memory I have in the past needed to fragment the LineStrings created from the edges further before polygonizing them - this didn't seem to be necessary with this example.
I have left out the final step of linking the new geometries back to the Node IDs with some kind of spatial join etc.

I don't have a code, but I guess that once i'm on the sidewalk, if I keep turning to the right at each corner, I will cycle through the edges of my block. I don't know the libraries so I'll just talk algo here.
from your point, go north until you reach a street
turn right as much as you can and walk on the street
on the next corner, find all the steets, chose the one that makes the smallest angle with your street counting from the right.
walk on that street.
turn right, etc.
It's actually an algorithm to use to exit a maze : keep your right hand on the wall and walk. It doesn't work in case of loops in the maze, you just loop around. But it gives a solution to your problem.

This is an implementation of Hashemi Emad's idea. It works well as long as the starting position is chosen such that there exists a way to step counterclockwise in a tight circle. For some edges, in particular around the outside of the map, this is not possible. I don't have an idea how to select good starting positions, or how to filter solutions -- but maybe somebody else has one.
Working example (starting with edge (1204573687, 4555480822)):
Example, where this approach does not work (starting with edge (1286684278, 5818325197)):
Code
#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8
"""
Find house blocks in osmnx graphs.
"""
import numpy as np
import networkx as nx
import osmnx as ox
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt; plt.ion()
from matplotlib.path import Path
from matplotlib.patches import PathPatch
ox.config(log_console=True, use_cache=True)
def k_core(G, k):
H = nx.Graph(G, as_view=True)
H.remove_edges_from(nx.selfloop_edges(H))
core_nodes = nx.k_core(H, k)
H = H.subgraph(core_nodes)
return G.subgraph(core_nodes)
def get_vector(G, n1, n2):
dx = np.diff([G.nodes.data()[n]['x'] for n in (n1, n2)])
dy = np.diff([G.nodes.data()[n]['y'] for n in (n1, n2)])
return np.array([dx, dy])
def angle_between(v1, v2):
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/31735642/2912349
ang1 = np.arctan2(*v1[::-1])
ang2 = np.arctan2(*v2[::-1])
return (ang1 - ang2) % (2 * np.pi)
def step_counterclockwise(G, edge, path):
start, stop = edge
v1 = get_vector(G, stop, start)
neighbors = set(G.neighbors(stop))
candidates = list(set(neighbors) - set([start]))
if not candidates:
raise Exception("Ran into a dead end!")
else:
angles = np.zeros_like(candidates, dtype=float)
for ii, neighbor in enumerate(candidates):
v2 = get_vector(G, stop, neighbor)
angles[ii] = angle_between(v1, v2)
next_node = candidates[np.argmin(angles)]
if next_node in path:
# next_node might not be the same as the first node in path;
# therefor, we backtrack until we end back at next_node
closed_path = [next_node]
for node in path[::-1]:
closed_path.append(node)
if node == next_node:
break
return closed_path[::-1] # reverse to have counterclockwise path
else:
path.append(next_node)
return step_counterclockwise(G, (stop, next_node), path)
def get_city_block_patch(G, boundary_nodes, *args, **kwargs):
xy = []
for node in boundary_nodes:
x = G.nodes.data()[node]['x']
y = G.nodes.data()[node]['y']
xy.append((x, y))
path = Path(xy, closed=True)
return PathPatch(path, *args, **kwargs)
if __name__ == '__main__':
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# load data
# # DO CACHE RESULTS -- otherwise you can get banned for repeatedly querying the same address
# G = ox.graph_from_address('Nørrebrogade 20, Copenhagen Municipality',
# network_type='all', distance=500)
# G_projected = ox.project_graph(G)
# ox.save_graphml(G_projected, filename='network.graphml')
G = ox.load_graphml('network.graphml')
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# prune nodes and edges that should/can not be part of a cycle;
# this also reduces the chance of running into a dead end when stepping counterclockwise
H = k_core(G, 2)
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# pick an edge and step counterclockwise until you complete a circle
# random edge
total_edges = len(H.edges)
idx = np.random.choice(total_edges)
start, stop, _ = list(H.edges)[idx]
# good edge
# start, stop = 1204573687, 4555480822
# bad edge
# start, stop = 1286684278, 5818325197
steps = step_counterclockwise(H, (start, stop), [start, stop])
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# plot
patch = get_city_block_patch(G, steps, facecolor='red', edgecolor='red', zorder=-1)
node_size = [100 if node in steps else 20 for node in G.nodes]
node_color = ['crimson' if node in steps else 'black' for node in G.nodes]
fig1, ax1 = ox.plot_graph(G, node_size=node_size, node_color=node_color, edge_color='k', edge_linewidth=1)
ax1.add_patch(patch)
fig1.savefig('city_block.png')

Align arbitrarily rotated text annotations relative to the text, not the bounding box

While trying to answer an old, unanswered question, I encountered a little problem concerning text annotations in matplotlib: When adding rotated text to a figure at a certain position, the text is aligned relative to the bounding box of the text, not the (imaginary) rotated box that holds the text itself. This is maybe best explained with a little example:
The figure shows pieces of text with different rotation angles and different alignment options. For each text object, the red point denotes the coordinate given to the ax.text() function. The blue box is the rotated frame around the text, and the black box is the approximate bounding box of the text (it's a bit too big, but one should get the idea). It's easily visible that, for the cases where alignment is at the edges (left, right, top, bottom), the red dot is on the sides or edges of the bounding box, not the text frame. The only alignment option, where the text is aligned in an intuitive way is if both horizontal and vertical alignments are set to 'center'. Now, this is not a bug, but intended behaviour as outlined here. However, in some situations, it's not very practical, as the position has to be adjusted 'manually' for the text to be in the desired place, and this adjustment changes if the rotation angle changes or if the figure is re-scaled.
The question is, is there a robust way to generate text that is aligned with the text frame rather with the bounding box. I already have a solution to the problem, but it was quite tedious to figure out, so I thought I'd share it.

New solution rotation_mode="anchor"
There is actually an argument rotation_mode to matplotlib.text.Text, which steers exactly the requested functionality. The default is rotation_mode="default" which recreates the unwanted behaviour from the question, while rotation_mode="anchor" anchors the point of revolution according to the text itself and not its bounding box.
ax.text(x,y,'test', rotation = deg, rotation_mode="anchor")
Also see the demo_text_rotation_mode example.
With this, the example from the question can be created easily without the need to subclass Text.
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
fig, axes = plt.subplots(3,3, figsize=(10,10),dpi=100)
aligns = [ (va,ha) for va in ('top', 'center', 'bottom')
for ha in ('left', 'center', 'right')]
xys = [[i,j] for j in np.linspace(0.9,0.1,5) for i in np.linspace(0.1,0.9,5)]
degs = np.linspace(0,360,25)
for ax, align in zip(axes.reshape(-1), aligns):
ax.set_xlim([-0.1,1.1])
ax.set_ylim([-0.1,1.1])
for deg,xy in zip(degs,xys):
x,y = xy
ax.plot(x,y,'r.')
text = ax.text(x,y,'test',
rotation = deg,
rotation_mode="anchor", ### <--- this is the key
va = align[0],
ha = align[1],
bbox=dict(facecolor='none', edgecolor='blue', pad=0.0),
)
ax.set_title('alignment = {}'.format(align))
fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()
old solution, subclassing Text
In case one is still interested, the solution given by #ThomasKühn is of course working fine, but has some drawbacks when text is used in a non-cartesian system, because it calculates the offset needed in Data coordinates.
The following would be a version of the code which offsets the text in display coordinates by using a transformation, which is temporarily attached while drawing the text. It can therefore also be used e.g. in polar plots.
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import patches, text
import matplotlib.transforms
import numpy as np
class TextTrueAlign(text.Text):
"""
A Text object that always aligns relative to the text, not
to the bounding box; also when the text is rotated.
"""
def __init__(self, x, y, text, **kwargs):
super(TextTrueAlign, self).__init__(x,y,text, **kwargs)
self.__Ha = self.get_ha()
self.__Va = self.get_va()
def draw(self, renderer, *args, **kwargs):
"""
Overload of the Text.draw() function
"""
trans = self.get_transform()
offset = self.update_position()
# while drawing, set a transform which is offset
self.set_transform(trans + offset)
super(TextTrueAlign, self).draw(renderer, *args, **kwargs)
# reset to original transform
self.set_transform(trans)
def update_position(self):
"""
As the (center/center) alignment always aligns to the center of the
text, even upon rotation, we make use of this here. The algorithm
first computes the (x,y) offset for the un-rotated text between
centered alignment and the alignment requested by the user. This offset
is then rotated by the given rotation angle.
Finally a translation of the negative offset is returned.
"""
#resetting to the original state:
rotation = self.get_rotation()
self.set_rotation(0)
self.set_va(self.__Va)
self.set_ha(self.__Ha)
##from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5320205/matplotlib-text-dimensions
##getting the current renderer, so that
##get_window_extent() works
renderer = self.axes.figure.canvas.get_renderer()
##computing the bounding box for the un-rotated text
##aligned as requested by the user
bbox1 = self.get_window_extent(renderer=renderer)
##re-aligning text to (center,center) as here rotations
##do what is intuitively expected
self.set_va('center')
self.set_ha('center')
##computing the bounding box for the un-rotated text
##aligned to (center,center)
bbox2 = self.get_window_extent(renderer=renderer)
##computing the difference vector between the two alignments
dr = np.array(bbox2.get_points()[0]-bbox1.get_points()[0])
##computing the rotation matrix, which also accounts for
##the aspect ratio of the figure, to stretch squeeze
##dimensions as needed
rad = np.deg2rad(rotation)
rot_mat = np.array([
[np.cos(rad), np.sin(rad)],
[-np.sin(rad), np.cos(rad)]
])
##computing the offset vector
drp = np.dot(dr,rot_mat)
# transform to translate by the negative offset vector
offset = matplotlib.transforms.Affine2D().translate(-drp[0],-drp[1])
##setting rotation value back to the one requested by the user
self.set_rotation(rotation)
return offset
if __name__ == '__main__':
fig, axes = plt.subplots(3,3, figsize=(10,10),dpi=100)
aligns = [ (va,ha) for va in ('top', 'center', 'bottom')
for ha in ('left', 'center', 'right')]
xys = [[i,j] for j in np.linspace(0.9,0.1,5) for i in np.linspace(0.1,0.9,5)]
degs = np.linspace(0,360,25)
for ax, align in zip(axes.reshape(-1), aligns):
ax.set_xlim([-0.1,1.1])
ax.set_ylim([-0.1,1.1])
for deg,xy in zip(degs,xys):
x,y = xy
ax.plot(x,y,'r.')
text = TextTrueAlign(
x = x,
y = y,
text='test',
axes = ax,
rotation = deg,
va = align[0],
ha = align[1],
bbox=dict(facecolor='none', edgecolor='blue', pad=0.0),
)
ax.add_artist(text)
ax.set_title('alignment = {}'.format(align))
fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()

After some searching and digging into the matplotlib code itself, and with some inspiration from here and here, I have come up with the following solution:
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import patches, text
import numpy as np
import math
class TextTrueAlign(text.Text):
"""
A Text object that always aligns relative to the text, not
to the bounding box; also when the text is rotated.
"""
def __init__(self, x, y, text, **kwargs):
super().__init__(x,y,text, **kwargs)
self.__Ha = self.get_ha()
self.__Va = self.get_va()
self.__Rotation = self.get_rotation()
self.__Position = self.get_position()
def draw(self, renderer, *args, **kwargs):
"""
Overload of the Text.draw() function
"""
self.update_position()
super().draw(renderer, *args, **kwargs)
def update_position(self):
"""
As the (center/center) alignment always aligns to the center of the
text, even upon rotation, we make use of this here. The algorithm
first computes the (x,y) offset for the un-rotated text between
centered alignment and the alignment requested by the user. This offset
is then transformed according to the requested rotation angle and the
aspect ratio of the graph. Finally the transformed offset is used to
shift the text such that the alignment point coincides with the
requested coordinate also when the text is rotated.
"""
#resetting to the original state:
self.set_rotation(0)
self.set_va(self.__Va)
self.set_ha(self.__Ha)
self.set_position(self.__Position)
ax = self.axes
xy = self.__Position
##determining the aspect ratio:
##from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41597177/get-aspect-ratio-of-axes
##data limits
xlim = ax.get_xlim()
ylim = ax.get_ylim()
## Axis size on figure
figW, figH = ax.get_figure().get_size_inches()
## Ratio of display units
_, _, w, h = ax.get_position().bounds
##final aspect ratio
aspect = ((figW * w)/(figH * h))*(ylim[1]-ylim[0])/(xlim[1]-xlim[0])
##from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5320205/matplotlib-text-dimensions
##getting the current renderer, so that
##get_window_extent() works
renderer = ax.figure.canvas.get_renderer()
##computing the bounding box for the un-rotated text
##aligned as requested by the user
bbox1 = self.get_window_extent(renderer=renderer)
bbox1d = ax.transData.inverted().transform(bbox1)
width = bbox1d[1,0]-bbox1d[0,0]
height = bbox1d[1,1]-bbox1d[0,1]
##re-aligning text to (center,center) as here rotations
##do what is intuitively expected
self.set_va('center')
self.set_ha('center')
##computing the bounding box for the un-rotated text
##aligned to (center,center)
bbox2 = self.get_window_extent(renderer=renderer)
bbox2d = ax.transData.inverted().transform(bbox2)
##computing the difference vector between the two
##alignments
dr = np.array(bbox2d[0]-bbox1d[0])
##computing the rotation matrix, which also accounts for
##the aspect ratio of the figure, to stretch squeeze
##dimensions as needed
rad = np.deg2rad(self.__Rotation)
rot_mat = np.array([
[math.cos(rad), math.sin(rad)*aspect],
[-math.sin(rad)/aspect, math.cos(rad)]
])
##computing the offset vector
drp = np.dot(dr,rot_mat)
##setting new position
self.set_position((xy[0]-drp[0],xy[1]-drp[1]))
##setting rotation value back to the one requested by the user
self.set_rotation(self.__Rotation)
if __name__ == '__main__':
fig, axes = plt.subplots(3,3, figsize=(10,10),dpi=100)
aligns = [ (va,ha) for va in ('top', 'center', 'bottom')
for ha in ('left', 'center', 'right')]
xys = [[i,j] for j in np.linspace(0.9,0.1,5) for i in np.linspace(0.1,0.9,5)]
degs = np.linspace(0,360,25)
for ax, align in zip(axes.reshape(-1), aligns):
ax.set_xlim([-0.1,1.1])
ax.set_ylim([-0.1,1.1])
for deg,xy in zip(degs,xys):
ax.plot(*xy,'r.')
text = TextTrueAlign(
x = xy[0],
y = xy[1],
text='test',
axes = ax,
rotation = deg,
va = align[0],
ha = align[1],
bbox=dict(facecolor='none', edgecolor='blue', pad=0.0),
)
ax.add_artist(text)
ax.set_title('alignment = {}'.format(align))
fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()
The example is somewhat lengthy, because I had to write a class that is derived from the matplotlib.text.Text class in order to properly update the text object upon redraw (for instance if the figure is re-scaled). The code relies on the text always aligning to its center point, if both horizontal and vertical alignments are set to 'center'. It takes the difference between the bounding boxes of the text with center alignment and with requested alignment to predict an offset by which the text needs to be shifted after rotation. The output of the example looks like this:
As the aspect ratio of the graph, axes, and figure are taken into account, this approach is also robust to re-sizing of the figure.
I think that, by treating the methods set_ha(), set_va(), set_rotation(), and set_position() the way I do, I might have broken some of the original functionality of matplotlib.text.Text, but that should be relatively easy to fix by overloading these functions and replacing a few self with super().
Any comments or suggestions how to improve this would be highly appreciated. Also, if you happen to test this and find any bugs or flaws, please let me know and I will try to fix them. Hope this is useful to someone :)

How to remove/omit smaller contour lines using matplotlib

I am trying to plot contour lines of pressure level. I am using a netCDF file which contain the higher resolution data (ranges from 3 km to 27 km). Due to higher resolution data set, I get lot of pressure values which are not required to be plotted (rather I don't mind omitting certain contour line of insignificant values). I have written some plotting script based on the examples given in this link http://matplotlib.org/basemap/users/examples.html.
After plotting the image looks like this
From the image I have encircled the contours which are small and not required to be plotted. Also, I would like to plot all the contour lines smoother as mentioned in the above image. Overall I would like to get the contour image like this:-
Possible solution I think of are
Find out the number of points required for plotting contour and mask/omit those lines if they are small in number.
or
Find the area of the contour (as I want to omit only circled contour) and omit/mask those are smaller.
or
Reduce the resolution (only contour) by increasing the distance to 50 km - 100 km.
I am able to successfully get the points using SO thread Python: find contour lines from matplotlib.pyplot.contour()
But I am not able to implement any of the suggested solution above using those points.
Any solution to implement the above suggested solution is really appreciated.
Edit:-
# Andras Deak
I used print 'diameter is ', diameter line just above del(level.get_paths()[kp]) line to check if the code filters out the required diameter. Here is the filterd messages when I set if diameter < 15000::
diameter is 9099.66295612
diameter is 13264.7838257
diameter is 445.574234531
diameter is 1618.74618114
diameter is 1512.58974168
However the resulting image does not have any effect. All look same as posed image above. I am pretty sure that I have saved the figure (after plotting the wind barbs).
Regarding the solution for reducing the resolution, plt.contour(x[::2,::2],y[::2,::2],mslp[::2,::2]) it works. I have to apply some filter to make the curve smooth.
Full working example code for removing lines:-
Here is the example code for your review
#!/usr/bin/env python
from netCDF4 import Dataset
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import scipy.ndimage
from mpl_toolkits.basemap import interp
from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
# Set default map
west_lon = 68
east_lon = 93
south_lat = 7
north_lat = 23
nc = Dataset('ncfile.nc')
# Get this variable for later calucation
temps = nc.variables['T2']
time = 0 # We will take only first interval for this example
# Draw basemap
m = Basemap(projection='merc', llcrnrlat=south_lat, urcrnrlat=north_lat,
llcrnrlon=west_lon, urcrnrlon=east_lon, resolution='l')
m.drawcoastlines()
m.drawcountries(linewidth=1.0)
# This sets the standard grid point structure at full resolution
x, y = m(nc.variables['XLONG'][0], nc.variables['XLAT'][0])
# Set figure margins
width = 10
height = 8
plt.figure(figsize=(width, height))
plt.rc("figure.subplot", left=.001)
plt.rc("figure.subplot", right=.999)
plt.rc("figure.subplot", bottom=.001)
plt.rc("figure.subplot", top=.999)
plt.figure(figsize=(width, height), frameon=False)
# Convert Surface Pressure to Mean Sea Level Pressure
stemps = temps[time] + 6.5 * nc.variables['HGT'][time] / 1000.
mslp = nc.variables['PSFC'][time] * np.exp(9.81 / (287.0 * stemps) * nc.variables['HGT'][time]) * 0.01 + (
6.7 * nc.variables['HGT'][time] / 1000)
# Contour only at 2 hpa interval
level = []
for i in range(mslp.min(), mslp.max(), 1):
if i % 2 == 0:
if i >= 1006 and i <= 1018:
level.append(i)
# Save mslp values to upload to SO thread
# np.savetxt('mslp.txt', mslp, fmt='%.14f', delimiter=',')
P = plt.contour(x, y, mslp, V=2, colors='b', linewidths=2, levels=level)
# Solution suggested by Andras Deak
for level in P.collections:
for kp,path in enumerate(level.get_paths()):
# include test for "smallness" of your choice here:
# I'm using a simple estimation for the diameter based on the
# x and y diameter...
verts = path.vertices # (N,2)-shape array of contour line coordinates
diameter = np.max(verts.max(axis=0) - verts.min(axis=0))
if diameter < 15000: # threshold to be refined for your actual dimensions!
#print 'diameter is ', diameter
del(level.get_paths()[kp]) # no remove() for Path objects:(
#level.remove() # This does not work. produces ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list
plt.gcf().canvas.draw()
plt.savefig('dummy', bbox_inches='tight')
plt.close()
After the plot is saved I get the same image
You can see that the lines are not removed yet. Here is the link to mslp array which we are trying to play with http://www.mediafire.com/download/7vi0mxqoe0y6pm9/mslp.txt
If you want x and y data which are being used in the above code, I can upload for your review.
Smooth line
You code to remove the smaller circles working perfectly. However the other question I have asked in the original post (smooth line) does not seems to work. I have used your code to slice the array to get minimal values and contoured it. I have used the following code to reduce the array size:-
slice = 15
CS = plt.contour(x[::slice,::slice],y[::slice,::slice],mslp[::slice,::slice], colors='b', linewidths=1, levels=levels)
The result is below.
After searching for few hours I found this SO thread having simmilar issue:-
Regridding regular netcdf data
But none of the solution provided over there works.The questions similar to mine above does not have proper solutions. If this issue is solved then the code is perfect and complete.

General idea
Your question seems to have 2 very different halves: one about omitting small contours, and another one about smoothing the contour lines. The latter is simpler, since I can't really think of anything else other than decreasing the resolution of your contour() call, just like you said.
As for removing a few contour lines, here's a solution which is based on directly removing contour lines individually. You have to loop over the collections of the object returned by contour(), and for each element check each Path, and delete the ones you don't need. Redrawing the figure's canvas will get rid of the unnecessary lines:
# dummy example based on matplotlib.pyplot.clabel example:
import matplotlib
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.cm as cm
import matplotlib.mlab as mlab
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
delta = 0.025
x = np.arange(-3.0, 3.0, delta)
y = np.arange(-2.0, 2.0, delta)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(x, y)
Z1 = mlab.bivariate_normal(X, Y, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
Z2 = mlab.bivariate_normal(X, Y, 1.5, 0.5, 1, 1)
# difference of Gaussians
Z = 10.0 * (Z2 - Z1)
plt.figure()
CS = plt.contour(X, Y, Z)
for level in CS.collections:
for kp,path in reversed(list(enumerate(level.get_paths()))):
# go in reversed order due to deletions!
# include test for "smallness" of your choice here:
# I'm using a simple estimation for the diameter based on the
# x and y diameter...
verts = path.vertices # (N,2)-shape array of contour line coordinates
diameter = np.max(verts.max(axis=0) - verts.min(axis=0))
if diameter<1: # threshold to be refined for your actual dimensions!
del(level.get_paths()[kp]) # no remove() for Path objects:(
# this might be necessary on interactive sessions: redraw figure
plt.gcf().canvas.draw()
Here's the original(left) and the removed version(right) for a diameter threshold of 1 (note the little piece of the 0 level at the top):
Note that the top little line is removed while the huge cyan one in the middle doesn't, even though both correspond to the same collections element i.e. the same contour level. If we didn't want to allow this, we could've called CS.collections[k].remove(), which would probably be a much safer way of doing the same thing (but it wouldn't allow us to differentiate between multiple lines corresponding to the same contour level).
To show that fiddling around with the cut-off diameter works as expected, here's the result for a threshold of 2:
All in all it seems quite reasonable.
Your actual case
Since you've added your actual data, here's the application to your case. Note that you can directly generate the levels in a single line using np, which will almost give you the same result. The exact same can be achieved in 2 lines (generating an arange, then selecting those that fall between p1 and p2). Also, since you're setting levels in the call to contour, I believe the V=2 part of the function call has no effect.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# insert actual data here...
Z = np.loadtxt('mslp.txt',delimiter=',')
X,Y = np.meshgrid(np.linspace(0,300000,Z.shape[1]),np.linspace(0,200000,Z.shape[0]))
p1,p2 = 1006,1018
# this is almost the same as the original, although it will produce
# [p1, p1+2, ...] instead of `[Z.min()+n, Z.min()+n+2, ...]`
levels = np.arange(np.maximum(Z.min(),p1),np.minimum(Z.max(),p2),2)
#control
plt.figure()
CS = plt.contour(X, Y, Z, colors='b', linewidths=2, levels=levels)
#modified
plt.figure()
CS = plt.contour(X, Y, Z, colors='b', linewidths=2, levels=levels)
for level in CS.collections:
for kp,path in reversed(list(enumerate(level.get_paths()))):
# go in reversed order due to deletions!
# include test for "smallness" of your choice here:
# I'm using a simple estimation for the diameter based on the
# x and y diameter...
verts = path.vertices # (N,2)-shape array of contour line coordinates
diameter = np.max(verts.max(axis=0) - verts.min(axis=0))
if diameter<15000: # threshold to be refined for your actual dimensions!
del(level.get_paths()[kp]) # no remove() for Path objects:(
# this might be necessary on interactive sessions: redraw figure
plt.gcf().canvas.draw()
plt.show()
Results, original(left) vs new(right):
Smoothing by resampling
I've decided to tackle the smoothing problem as well. All I could come up with is downsampling your original data, then upsampling again using griddata (interpolation). The downsampling part could also be done with interpolation, although the small-scale variation in your input data might make this problem ill-posed. So here's the crude version:
import scipy.interpolate as interp #the new one
# assume you have X,Y,Z,levels defined as before
# start resampling stuff
dN = 10 # use every dN'th element of the gridded input data
my_slice = [slice(None,None,dN),slice(None,None,dN)]
# downsampled data
X2,Y2,Z2 = X[my_slice],Y[my_slice],Z[my_slice]
# same as X2 = X[::dN,::dN] etc.
# upsampling with griddata over original mesh
Zsmooth = interp.griddata(np.array([X2.ravel(),Y2.ravel()]).T,Z2.ravel(),(X,Y),method='cubic')
# plot
plt.figure()
CS = plt.contour(X, Y, Zsmooth, colors='b', linewidths=2, levels=levels)
You can freely play around with the grids used for interpolation, in this case I just used the original mesh, as it was at hand. You can also play around with different kinds of interpolation: the default 'linear' one will be faster, but less smooth.
Result after downsampling(left) and upsampling(right):
Of course you should still apply the small-line-removal algorithm after this resampling business, and keep in mind that this heavily distorts your input data (since if it wasn't distorted, then it wouldn't be smooth). Also, note that due to the crude method used in the downsampling step, we introduce some missing values near the top/right edges of the region under consideraton. If this is a problem, you should consider doing the downsampling based on griddata as I've noted earlier.

This is a pretty bad solution, but it's the only one that I've come up with. Use the get_contour_verts function in this solution you linked to, possibly with the matplotlib._cntr module so that nothing gets plotted initially. That gives you a list of contour lines, sections, vertices, etc. Then you have to go through that list and pop the contours you don't want. You could do this by calculating a minimum diameter, for example; if the max distance between points is less than some cutoff, throw it out.
That leaves you with a list of LineCollection objects. Now if you make a Figure and Axes instance, you can use Axes.add_collection to add all of the LineCollections in the list.
I checked this out really quick, but it seemed to work. I'll come back with a minimum working example if I get a chance. Hope it helps!
Edit: Here's an MWE of the basic idea. I wasn't familiar with plt._cntr.Cntr, so I ended up using plt.contour to get the initial contour object. As a result, you end up making two figures; you just have to close the first one. You can replace checkDiameter with whatever function works. I think you could turn the line segments into a Polygon and calculate areas, but you'd have to figure that out on your own. Let me know if you run into problems with this code, but it at least works for me.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
def checkDiameter(seg, tol=.3):
# Function for screening line segments. NB: Not actually a proper diameter.
diam = (seg[:,0].max() - seg[:,0].min(),
seg[:,1].max() - seg[:,1].min())
return not (diam[0] < tol or diam[1] < tol)
# Create testing data
x = np.linspace(-1,1, 21)
xx, yy = np.meshgrid(x,x)
z = np.exp(-(xx**2 + .5*yy**2))
# Original plot with plt.contour
fig0, ax0 = plt.subplots()
# Make sure this contour object actually has a tiny contour to remove
cntrObj = ax0.contour(xx,yy,z, levels=[.2,.4,.6,.8,.9,.95,.99,.999])
# Primary loop: Copy contours into a new LineCollection
lineNew = list()
for lineOriginal in cntrObj.collections:
# Get properties of the original LineCollection
segments = lineOriginal.get_segments()
propDict = lineOriginal.properties()
propDict = {key: value for (key,value) in propDict.items()
if key in ['linewidth','color','linestyle']} # Whatever parameters you want to carry over
# Filter out the lines with small diameters
segments = [seg for seg in segments if checkDiameter(seg)]
# Create new LineCollection out of the OK segments
if len(segments) > 0:
lineNew.append(mpl.collections.LineCollection(segments, **propDict))
# Make new plot with only these line collections; display results
fig1, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.set_xlim(ax0.get_xlim())
ax1.set_ylim(ax0.get_ylim())
for line in lineNew:
ax1.add_collection(line)
plt.show()
FYI: The bit with propDict is just to automate bringing over some of the line properties from the original plot. You can't use the whole dictionary at once, though. First, it contains the old plot's line segments, but you can just swap those for the new ones. But second, it appears to contain a number of parameters that are in conflict with each other: multiple linewidths, facecolors, etc. The {key for key in propDict if I want key} workaround is my way to bypass that, but I'm sure someone else can do it more cleanly.