Cannot set axis ranges, axes for animate?

[johann-petrak]

I tried the .animate method and noticed that the dims=[from,to] parameter does not have any influence on the axis ranges.
I also tried to pass a pre-configured axis (with the axis ranges set manually via the matplotlib api) to the method using ax=myaxes, but this complains about ax getting passed twice in some nested function.

I trying this using the "%matplotlib widget" pragma, since I am using jupyter lab / notebook 7 or newer.

BTW I found that passing an axis to the .plot() method is the only way to avoid getting two figures in stead of one in that context. When I run

T1 = spatialmath.SE3.Trans(1,2,3)
fig=plt.figure() 
T1.plot()
plt.show()

I get two figures.

Running

fig=plt.figure() 
T1 = spatialmath.SE3.Trans(1,2,3)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
T1.plot(ax=ax)
plt.show()

shows correctly just one figure.

This allows me to set the axis ranges in a plot:

fig=plt.figure() 
T1 = spatialmath.SE3.Trans(1,2,3)
T1.plot(dims=[-3,5])
plt.show()

But the axis ranges are not set with animate (instead the default range 0,1 is shown):

T1 = spatialmath.SE3.Trans(1,2,3)
fig=plt.figure()
T1.animate(dims=[-3,3])
plt.show()

and it is also not possible to pass ax=ax to animate.

Package versions:
spatialmath 1.1.10
matplotlib 3.9.0
IPython 8.26.0
notebook 7.2.1
jupyter 1.0.0
jupyterlab 4.2.3
ipywidgets 8.1.3

[jcao-bdai]

Hi @johann-petrak , thank you for providing a detailed report

we've implemented an initial fix, in pull-request #131

please note that

• this fix mainly focuses on implementing a consistent API with ax= and dims= arguments;
• the other behavior you described at the beginning of this Issue (a redundant blank figure being created) is not yet fixed.

please feel free to give it a try if you are interested.

we will merge and cut a new release after we do more testing.

[jcao-bdai]

PR merged.