matplotlib - duplicate plot from one figure to another?

Question

I'm somewhat new to matplotlib. What I'm trying to do is write code that saves several figures to eps files, and then generates a composite figure. Basically what I'd like to do is have something like

def my_plot_1():
    fig = plt.figure()
    ...
    return fig.

def my_plot_2():
    fig = plt.figure()
    ...
    return fig

def my_combo_plot(fig1,fig2):
    fig = plt.figure()
    gs = gridspec.GridSpec(2,2)
    ax1 = plt.subplot(gs[0,0])
    ax2 = plt.subplot(gs[0,1])
    ax1 COPY fig1
    ax2 COPY fig2
    ...

where then later I could do something like

my_combo_plot( my_plot_1() , my_plot_2() )

and have all the data and settings get copied from the plots returned by the first two functions, but I can't figure out how this would be done with matplotlib.

Answer 1

Since pyplot kind of works like a state machine, I'm not sure if what you are asking for is possible. I would instead factor out the drawing code, something like this:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def my_plot_1(ax=None):
    if ax is None:
        ax = plt.gca()
    ax.plot([1, 2, 3], 'b-')

def my_plot_2(ax=None):
    if ax is None:
        ax = plt.gca()
    ax.plot([3, 2, 1], 'ro')

def my_combo_plot():
    ax1 = plt.subplot(1,2,1)
    ax2 = plt.subplot(1,2,2)
    my_plot_1(ax1)
    my_plot_2(ax2)