3D surface plot in Python using plotly

Question

I have a question about how the plotly surface code works.

I've got the data from dataframe to plot surface 3D graph, 1D array of x, y and z

example:

x (temperatures) =      [26,25,24,29,21,20,21,21,26]

y (humidity)     =      [50,60,50,40,50,70,80,90,90]

z (power consumption) = [12,13,14,11,11,10,11,12,15]

I need to plot each point (ex: x1,y1,z1) to be a surface and I have used this code

import plotly.graph_objects as go
import numpy as np

#x,y,z from above

fig = go.Figure(data = go.Surface(z=z,
                                  x=x,
                                  y=y))

fig.update_traces(contours_z = dict(show = True , usecolormap = True ,
                                    highlightcolor = 'limegreen' , project_z = True))

fig.update_layout(title = 'Linear')

fig.show()

but it doesn't show anything.

(I also known that z need to be 2D array but I don't know why it is)

How can I fix this problem?

Thank you

Answer 1

My answer consists of two parts:

• How you can plot this data in 3d.
• What's needed to create a 3d surface plot.

Plotting your data in 3D

With the data you have - three vectors of x, y, and z, you can easily create a 3D scatter plot:

fig = go.Figure(data=[go.Scatter3d(x=x, y=y, z=z,
                                   mode='markers')])

fig.show()

Here's what it looks like, and you can rotate it and swivel it in all directions.

3D Surface Plot

To create a 3D surface plot, you need a z-value for each combination of a and y. Think of a surface plot as a map. For each point (x,y) on the map, you need to provide the altitude (z) at that point, so that plotly can create the surface you're looking for.