How do I plot Shapely polygons and objects using Matplotlib?

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

Use:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  x,y = polygon1.exterior.xy plt.plot(x,y) 

Or, more succinctly:

plt.plot(*polygon1.exterior.xy) 

Answer 2

A little late but I find the most convenient way to do this is with Geopandas as suggested above but without writing to a file first.

from shapely.geometry import Polygon import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import geopandas as gpd  polygon1 = Polygon([(0,5),                     (1,1),                     (3,0),                     ])   p = gpd.GeoSeries(polygon1)  p.plot()  plt.show() 

Checkout the docs for Geopandas.GeoSeries