Matplotlib remove patches from figure

Question

In my case, I want to remove one of the circle when clicking reset button. However, ax.clear() would clear all circles on the current figure.

Can someone tell me how to remove only part of the patches?

import matplotlib.patches as patches import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from matplotlib.widgets import Button  fig = plt.figure() ax = fig.add_subplot(111)   circle1 = patches.Circle((0.3, 0.3), 0.03, fc='r', alpha=0.5) circle2 = patches.Circle((0.4, 0.3), 0.03, fc='r', alpha=0.5) button = Button(plt.axes([0.8, 0.025, 0.1, 0.04]), 'Reset', color='g', hovercolor='0.975') ax.add_patch(circle1) ax.add_patch(circle2)  def reset(event):     '''what to do here'''     ax.clear()  button.on_clicked(reset) plt.show() 

Answer 1

Try this:

def reset(event):     circle1.remove() 

Also maybe you prefer:

def reset(event):     circle1.set_visible(False) 

Answer 2

Different options is this

def reset(event):     ax.patches = [] 

it removes all the patches. This option was viable for Matplotlib < 3.5.0. With Matplotlib 3.5.0 you get the error AttributeError: can't set attribute

In that case, you can use the following option

def reset(event):     ax.patches.pop()     # Statement below is optional     fig.canvas.draw()