Plot a Magnetic Field#

The following example demonstrates how PyVista can be used to plot a magnetic field.

This example relies on streamlines_from_source() to generate streamlines and add_volume() to plot the strength of the magnetic field.

This dataset was created from the Coil Field Lines example from the awesome magpylib library.

from __future__ import annotations

import numpy as np

import pyvista as pv
from pyvista import examples

Download the DataSet#

Let’s first download the example dataset and show that it’s a pyvista.ImageData with the magnetic field stored as the 'B' array in point_data.

grid = examples.download_coil_magnetic_field()
grid.point_data
pyvista DataSetAttributes
Association     : POINT
Active Scalars  : B
Active Vectors  : B
Active Texture  : None
Active Normals  : None
Contains arrays :
    B                       float64    (531441, 3)          VECTORS

Create Coils#

Create several hoops to represent the coil. This matches the geometry in the original example.

coils = [pv.Polygon((0, 0, z), radius=5, n_sides=100, fill=False) for z in np.linspace(-8, 8, 16)]
coil_block = pv.MultiBlock(coils)
coil_block.plot(render_lines_as_tubes=True, line_width=10)
magnetic fields

Compute and Plot Field Lines#

Next, let’s compute streamlines from the center of the coil to represent the direction of the magnetic force. For this, we can create a simple pyvista.Disc() and use that as the source of the streamlines.

seed = pv.Disc(inner=1, outer=5.4, r_res=2, c_res=12)
strl = grid.streamlines_from_source(
    seed,
    vectors='B',
    max_length=180,
    initial_step_length=0.1,
    integration_direction='both',
)

pl = pv.Plotter()
pl.add_mesh(
    strl.tube(radius=0.1),
    cmap='bwr',
    ambient=0.2,
)
pl.add_mesh(coil_block, render_lines_as_tubes=True, line_width=5, color='w')
pl.camera.zoom(3)
pl.show()
magnetic fields

Plot the Magnet Field Strength#

Finally, let’s bring this all together by plotting the magnetic field strength while also plotting the streamlines and the coil.

# Take the norm of the magnetic field
scalars = np.linalg.norm(grid['B'], axis=1)

# Customize the opacity to make it easier to visualize the strength of the
# field nearby the coil
opacity = 1 - np.geomspace(1.0, 0.05, 10)



# Add this all to the plotter
pl = pv.Plotter()
pl.add_mesh(
    strl.tube(radius=0.1),
    color='black',
)
pl.add_mesh(coil_block, render_lines_as_tubes=True, line_width=5, color='w')
vol = pl.add_volume(
    grid,
    scalars=scalars,
    opacity=opacity,
    cmap='hot',
    show_scalar_bar=False,
)
vol.prop.interpolation_type = 'linear'
pl.camera.zoom(5)
pl.show()
magnetic fields

Total running time of the script: (0 minutes 15.364 seconds)

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