Improvements to plotting functionality

[brosaplanella]

Description

Here are a list of possible improvements to PyBaMM's plotting capability (please suggest additional ones if you have any ideas):

• Allow QuickPlot.plot to take a list of times #4271
• Have a static_plot mode so variables that depend on space (1D) and time are plotted as heatmaps rather than dynamic curves.
• When a plot has two lines, both constant, but of different value, they don't display as they sit in the edge of the plot (the current fix for constants only works if there is a single line).

Motivation

No response

Possible Implementation

No response

Additional context

Not sure if there are easy hacks or ways around this, but if so it was not clear in the docs.

[Saransh-cpp]

I think a portion of create_gif does act as the proposed QuickPlot.plot. We can maybe refactor this method to make way for the new method -

PyBaMM/pybamm/plotting/quick_plot.py

Lines 745 to 772 in e730dcb

	def create_gif(self, number_of_images=80, duration=0.1, output_filename="plot.gif"):
	"""
	Generates x plots over a time span of max_t - min_t and compiles them to create
	a GIF.
	Parameters
	----------
	number_of_images : int (optional)
	Number of images/plots to be compiled for a GIF.
	duration : float (optional)
	Duration of visibility of a single image/plot in the created GIF.
	output_filename : str (optional)
	Name of the generated GIF file.
	"""
	import imageio.v2 as imageio
	import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
	# time stamps at which the images/plots will be created
	time_array = np.linspace(self.min_t, self.max_t, num=number_of_images)
	images = []
	# create images/plots
	for val in time_array:
	self.plot(val)
	images.append("plot" + str(val) + ".png")
	self.fig.savefig("plot" + str(val) + ".png", dpi=300)
	plt.close()

[brosaplanella]

My bad, I wasn't very clear. I meant multiple snapshots on the same plot.

[medha-14]

I would also like to work on the second issue, which involves creating a static_plot function. Could you please provide a more detailed explanation of this issue to help me better understand the requirements?