Viewing angle control in Matplotlib - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Viewing angle control

📖 Scenario: You are working with 3D data visualization to better understand shapes from different perspectives. Changing the viewing angle helps you see the data clearly.

🎯 Goal: You will create a 3D plot of a simple shape and learn how to control the viewing angle using matplotlib.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create 3D data points for a cube

Set up a viewing angle with elevation and azimuth

Plot the cube with the specified viewing angle

Display the plot

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

3D visualization helps engineers, scientists, and data analysts understand shapes and spatial data from different perspectives.

💼 Career

Knowing how to control viewing angles in 3D plots is useful for data visualization roles and any job involving 3D data analysis.

1

Create 3D data points for a cube

Create a list called cube_points containing these 8 tuples representing the corners of a cube: (0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0), (1, 1, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 1), (1, 1, 1), (0, 1, 1).

Matplotlib

# Create the list cube_points with the 8 cube corner tuples
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with tuples for each corner point.

2

Set viewing angle variables

Create two variables: elevation and azimuth. Set elevation to 30 and azimuth to 45.

Matplotlib

cube_points = [(0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0), (1, 1, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 1), (1, 1, 1), (0, 1, 1)]
# Set elevation to 30 and azimuth to 45
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use simple variable assignments for elevation and azimuth angles.

3

Plot the cube with the viewing angle

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt and Axes3D from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d. Create a 3D plot, unpack cube_points into x, y, and z lists, plot the points using ax.scatter, set the viewing angle using ax.view_init(elev=elevation, azim=azimuth).

Matplotlib

cube_points = [(0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0), (1, 1, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 1), (1, 1, 1), (0, 1, 1)]
elevation = 30
azimuth = 45
# Import matplotlib and create 3D plot
# Unpack cube_points into x, y, z
# Plot points and set viewing angle
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use zip(*cube_points) to separate coordinates and ax.view_init to set the angle.

4

Display the 3D plot

Use plt.show() to display the 3D plot with the cube and the specified viewing angle.

Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D

cube_points = [(0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0), (1, 1, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 1), (1, 1, 1), (0, 1, 1)]
elevation = 30
azimuth = 45

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
x, y, z = zip(*cube_points)
ax.scatter(x, y, z)
ax.view_init(elev=elevation, azim=azimuth)
# Show the plot
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plt.show() to display the figure window.