plotly_3d_primitives

A small library for quickly generating 3d traces (Mesh3d and Scatter3d) of primitive shapes.

The API is intentionally designed to mimic PyVista so that, for the supported geometries, it could be a drop-in replacement.

Primitives currently supported

• cube
• sphere
• prism (with n-sides)
• cone
• line
• circular_arc_from_normal

Installation and basic usage

pip install plotly_3d_primitives

Each primitive is created from a function which returns a plotly.graph_objects.Trace, generally either a plotly.graph_objects.Mesh3d or a plotly.graph_objects.Scatter3d.

import plotly_3d_primitives as prims
import plotly.graph_objects as go

a_cube = prims.cube(x_length=30, y_length=24, z_length=18, color='teal', opacity=0.5)

a_sphere = prims.sphere(radius=6.8, center=(-3, 0, 20), color="papayawhip", opacity=0.8) # everyone's favourite colour

a_cylinder = prims.prism(radius=10, center=(4, 10, 14), height=12, color="goldenrod", n_sides=12)

an_arc = prims.circular_arc_from_normal(center= (20, 10, 10), normal=(0, 1, 0), angle=215, color='red', line_width=10)

a_cone = prims.cone(center=(-5, -10, -6), direction=(0, 0, 1), height=14, radius=4, color='green', opacity=0.2)

a_line = prims.line(pointa=(1, -5, -10), pointb=(14, 23, 10), color="#333", opacity=1.0, line_width=15)

fig = go.Figure()
layout = go.Layout(scene=dict(aspectmode='data'), width=800, height=800)
fig.layout = layout

fig.add_traces([a_cube, a_sphere, a_cylinder, an_arc, a_cone, a_line])
fig.show()

Motivation

Getting easy-and-consistent 3d geometry display in Python for the web can be fussy. VTK and PyVista are great buuuuuttt...PyVista (currently) does not work with streamlit. PyVista also requires a LOT of dependencies to be installed in order to work in a Jupyter environment.

Plotly is easy to install and displays in any web environment. It has great built-in display features (hover, annotations, click-button screenshots) and an easy-to-understand data model.

So, I have implemented some of PyVista's functionality in Plotly so it can be used as a drop-in replacement for these primitives.

Contributions for other primitives and additional PyVista functionality is welcome.

The functionality currently implemented is enough for me to create an alternative visualization module for the structural analysis library, PyNite. This was the primary motivation for creating this library but I have also used it in other locations.

Note: Plotly is not designed to handle large amounts of detailed 3d meshes. If you use this library to build large models, you can stall-out plotly and hang your browser. So, try to keep it light.