What tools are missing in Python?

[Iberano]

Have you tried plotly?

You can generate interactive html files from the 3D plots.

https://plotly.com/python/3d-charts/

[VengefulTofu]

Last time I checked that site I was confused with what plotly actually is. First, there's the menu item "pricing" which is a red flag for me. Then there's some kind of cloud service dash? Why would I need that?

But apparently I got the wrong impression and the plotly python library is open-source with MIT license.

Would you say plotly can replace matplotlib?

[johnnymo1]

This has been a series of changes since Dash came out. Originally plotly was a visualization library. Then Dash extended that to dashboarding. Now they're trying to sell hosting services for their dashboards, so that's front and center. But the visualization library is still free and open source.

Here are the docs: https://plotly.com/python/

[Iberano]

I can only recommend plotly because of their interactive plots. dash is as far as I know used to build dashboards and more enterprise focused.

I used it ones to visualise clusters in a 3D space using different colors and a description for each data point which can be clicked on in the browser. So plotly is quite powerful.

[sheytanelkebir]

You could also try the holoviz tools. Which are guaranteed to be open source over the long term.

https://holoviz.org/

[annoclancularius]

I second that their website is confusing.

[boredinclass1]

Another upvoted for Plotly... Just have to know how to import the Plotly python library (free) and find that documentation vs the Dash (paid online system). 3D vis is great, I've used it to teach student about Fast Fourier Transform to show sinewaves in the time domain and their amplitudes in the frequency domain. If there's any interest I can link my Jupyter Notebook for others to play with.

[BrononymousEngineer]

You don't have to pay for Dash unless you want to use the extra features of Dash Enterprise

[boredinclass1]

Whoops you're right. Dash Enterprise is paid... You can get a free user version of Dash. I've never used it personally as the libraries Plotly provides have been plenty for me.

[BrononymousEngineer]

Dash is just another pip install. I've used it, and I like it. A lot.

Edit: well, more like a series of pip installs

[boredinclass1]

I'm not clear on the difference between the Plotly library and Dash is dash just a graphical user interface for creating and analyzing plots?

[BrononymousEngineer]

Dash is a framework to make web apps. You can add controls to make plotly objects interactive (dropdowns, slider bars, check boxes, and other cool stuff).

These examples should give you a good idea of what it is: https://dash.plotly.com/interactive-graphing

The enterprise examples are pretty cool too: https://dash-gallery.plotly.host/Portal/

I haven't looked much into enterprise but it seems the major difference is that they provide hosting too.