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I have a pyQt application with several embedded matplotlib widgets (https://github.com/chipmuenk/pyFDA).

The automatic updating of plots can be turned off for each plotting widget to speed up the application (especially 3D plots can take quite long).

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to disable (grey out) the canvas completely yet. What I'd like is to do something like

class MplWidget(QWidget):
    """
    Construct a subwidget with Matplotlib canvas and NavigationToolbar
    """

    def __init__(self, parent):
        super(MplWidget, self).__init__(parent)
        # Create the mpl figure and construct the canvas with the figure
        self.fig = Figure()
        self.pltCanv = FigureCanvas(self.fig)
#-------------------------------------------------

self.mplwidget = MplWidget(self)
self.mplwidget.pltCanv.setEnabled(False) # <- this doesn't work

to make it clear that there is nothing to interact with in this widget. Is there an easy workaround?

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  • 1
    Is this about changing the color to grey or about preventing any user interaction? Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 11:29
  • Preventing any user interaction would be better but "greying out" would be sufficient. But I haven't even managed to do that ... Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 13:41
  • Greying: Use a patch as large as the figure, set its zorder very high, make it semitransparent. Preventing user interaction: disconnect all events from the canvas (this is a matplotlib operation, not one of PyQt). (I guess I could provide an answer, but in case of the second option it would be necessary to have a minimal reproducible example available for testing.) Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:19
  • No thanks, using a patch is fine for me - the other option sounds too complicated for a small UI improvement. As a third alternative, I'm clearing the figure (clf()) - not too pretty, but it also does the job. If you repost the patch solution as an answer, I could give you a credit. Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:27
  • Although I'm aware this question has a different (visual) context - since it contains "Disable matplotlib widget": there is also a matplotlib.widgets.Widget.set_active(active), which probably corresponds to disabling a widget. Note, though, that set_active for Radio and CheckButtons has different meaning! Commented Jan 27, 2022 at 22:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Grey out figure.

You may grey out the figure by placing a grey, semitransparent patch on top of it. To this end, you may create a Rectangle, set its zorder very high and give it the figure transform. To add it to a an axes, you may use ax.add_patch; however in order to add it to a figure with a 3D axes, this will not work and you would need to add it via fig.patches.extend. (See this answer)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
ax.plot([1,3,2],[1,2,3],[2,3,2])

rect=plt.Rectangle((0,0),1,1, transform=fig.transFigure, 
                   clip_on=False, zorder=100, alpha=0.5, color="grey")
fig.patches.extend([rect])

plt.show()

enter image description here

Disconnecting all events

You may disconnect all events from the canvas. This will prevent any user interaction, but is also not reversible; so if you need those events back at a later stage the solution would be more complicated.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
ax.plot([1,3,2],[1,2,3],[2,3,2])

for evt, callback in fig.canvas.callbacks.callbacks.items():
    for cid, _ in callback.items():
        fig.canvas.mpl_disconnect(cid)
plt.show()
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1 Comment

Thanx for extending your answer to 3D axes as well (which I do need)!

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