svg2mpl

Render SVG files into matplotlib artists.

svg2mpl parses an SVG into matplotlib Path/Patch objects and draws them on an Axes. Unlike a one-off "extract the paths" helper, it aims to be faithful to the SVG: it honors element transforms, <g> group inheritance, viewBox, the basic shape elements, and CSS styling.

📖 Documentation — guide, runnable example notebooks with rendered plots, and the full API reference.

Install

pip install svg2mpl
# with <style>-block CSS support:
pip install "svg2mpl[css]"

Quick start

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import svg2mpl

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
svg2mpl.add_svg("drawing.svg", ax=ax)
ax.set_aspect("equal")
plt.show()

add_svg can also place a drawing at a position/size/rotation, exclude paths by id, recolor per id, or convert to grayscale:

svg2mpl.add_svg(
    "logo.svg",
    xy=(2, 3),          # data coordinates of the anchor
    width=1.5,          # final width (height kept to aspect ratio)
    origin=(0.5, 0.5),  # anchor at the drawing's center
    rotation=30,
    exclude=r"grid.*",  # skip paths whose id matches
)

To inspect the parsed scene without drawing:

scene = svg2mpl.load("drawing.svg")
for shape in scene.shapes:
    print(shape.id, shape.kwargs)

Coverage

Gradients and <text> have best-effort support; see the docstrings for the current limitations (matplotlib has no native gradient fill, and font matching is approximate).

Coordinate system

SVG's y axis points down; matplotlib's points up. By default add_svg flips the y axis so a drawing looks the same as in a browser. Pass flip_y=False to keep raw SVG coordinates.

License

MIT