# Matplotlib Generate PGF File: Create a PGF Plot – Matplotlib Tutorial

By | November 23, 2020

If you plan to insert an image to latex, you can insert a pgf or eps image. In this tutorial, we will introduce how to use matplotlib to create a pgf file for latex.

## Preliminary

You should import matplot and use pgf.

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("pgf")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

You should notice: You must use matplotlib.use(“pgf”) before importing plt.

## Set some parameters for latex

In order to make your plot is adaptive for latex, you should make some parameters for your plot. Here is an example:

matplotlib.rcParams.update({
"pgf.texsystem": "pdflatex",
'font.family': 'serif',
'text.usetex': True,
'pgf.rcfonts': False,
})

## Start draw plot and save to pgf file

Then we can start to create a plot using matplotlib. Here is an example:

x = [1,2,3,4,5]
y = x

fig = plt.figure()
fig.set_size_inches(w=4.7747, h=3.5)

plt.rcParams['xtick.direction'] = 'in'
plt.rcParams['ytick.direction'] = 'in'
plt.plot(x, y, '-o')
plt.grid(linestyle="--")
plt.xlabel("Time/s",fontsize=7.5)
plt.ylabel("Angle/(°)",fontsize=7.5)
#plt.show()
plt.savefig('test.pgf')

In this example, we have created a test.pgf file, which contains our plot.

Then we can insert this test.pgf to your latex.