How do I plot Shapely polygons and objects using M

Question

I want to use Shapely for my computational geometry project. I need to be able to visualize and display polygons, lines, and other geometric objects for this. I've tried to use Matplotlib for this but I am having trouble with it.

from shapely.geometry import Polygon
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

polygon1 = Polygon([(0,5),
                    (1,1),
                    (3,0),
                    ])

plt.plot(polygon1)
plt.show()

I would like to be able to display this polygon in a plot. How would I change my code to do this?

Answer 1

If your data is in a .shp file, I would recommend geopandas:

import geopandas as gpd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

shapefile = gpd.read_file("path/to/shapes.shp")
shapefile.plot()
plt.show()

Answer 2

It might be an overkill, but as an alternative to other good comments I would add an option of installing QGIS - a free software for working with geometries. All you need to do is to save your geometries as a shape file (.shp), geoJSON or any other format and open it with QGIS. If you're planning a big project it maybe more convenient at the end than using matplotlib.

Answer 3

Use:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x,y = polygon1.exterior.xy
plt.plot(x,y)

Or, more succinctly:

plt.plot(*polygon1.exterior.xy)