Matplotlib 3d plot: how to get rid of the excessive white space?

Question

If I make a 3d plot in Matplotlib:

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')

x_labels = [10,20,30]
x = [1,2,3,4]
y = [3,1,5,1]
legend = False

for label in x_labels:
    x_3d = label*np.ones_like(x)
    ax.plot(x_3d, x, y, color='black', label='GMM')
    if legend == False:
        ax.legend()
        legend = True

ax.set_zlabel('test')

It will produce:

The left side have excessive white space. I want to know if it is possible to get rid of it?

Do you refer to the plot inside the axes or to the axes inside the figure? — Aguy, Jul 27 '16 at 07:33
If you click on the plot and move your mouse around the plot also moves. If you move it around on the x axis by 90 degrees the z label and the z ticks will be on the other side. I assume the excessive whitespace is to accommodate this. — DavidG, Jul 27 '16 at 07:58
@Aguy the left-most number `10`, and the white space at the left side of it and between the black background. — cqcn1991, Jul 27 '16 at 10:47
How do you export the figure? In case you write it to a file, try the `bbox_inches`-argument `fig.savefig('myfigure.png', bbox_inches='tight')` — wsj, Jul 29 '16 at 11:56
@wsj I display it in Jupyter Notebook, and then drag the image out, and then save it as png. — cqcn1991, Jul 29 '16 at 14:13
Related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41225293/remove-white-spaces-in-axes3d-matplotlib — Ciro Santilli Путлер Капут 六四事, Nov 15 '20 at 11:16

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 05 '17 at 05:07

It's probably too late, but I came across similar problems and here is what I did to remove the white space: use fig.subplot_adjust() to put left/right outside the normal region. In your case I found fig.subplot_adjust(left=-0.11) gives a reasonable result.

Full code below:

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
fig = plt.figure()  
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')

x_labels = [10,20,30]
x = [1,2,3,4]
y = [3,1,5,1]
legend = False

for label in x_labels:
    x_3d = label*np.ones_like(x)
    ax.plot(x_3d, x, y, color='black', label='GMM')
    if legend == False:
        ax.legend()
        legend = True

ax.set_zlabel('test')

fig.tight_layout()
fig.subplots_adjust(left=-0.11)  # plot outside the normal area

Matplotlib 3d plot: how to get rid of the excessive white space?

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