3D Bar Chart with Matplotlib

In this Matplotlib tutorial, we cover the 3D bar chart. The 3D bar chart is quite unique, as it allows us to plot more than 3 dimensions. No, you cannot plot past the 3rd dimension, but you can plot more than 3 dimensions.

With bars, you have the starting point of the bar, the height of the bar, and the width of the bar. With a 3D bar, you also get another choice, which is depth of the bar. Most of the time, a bar chart starts with the bar flat on an axis, but you can add another dimension by releasing this constraint as well. We'll keep it rather simple, however:

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3d
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import style
style.use('ggplot')

fig = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')

x3 = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
y3 = [5,6,7,8,2,5,6,3,7,2]
z3 = np.zeros(10)

dx = np.ones(10)
dy = np.ones(10)
dz = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]

ax1.bar3d(x3, y3, z3, dx, dy, dz)


ax1.set_xlabel('x axis')
ax1.set_ylabel('y axis')
ax1.set_zlabel('z axis')

plt.show()

Note here that we have to define x,y,z... and then 3 more dimensions for depth. This gives us:

The next tutorial: Conclusion with Matplotlib