Python plotting 2d data on to 3d axes

Question

I've had a look at matplotlib's examples of 3d plots, but none of these give me what I want to plot, something like:

The plot shows a series of measurements on the y-axis (N) and each measurement has an intensity spectrum (p/2hk_L), i.e. N is fixed for each line you see in the graph. What is the easiest function to use to plot data like this?

Answer 1

Here is a try:

import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')

x = np.linspace(-50,50,100)
y = np.arange(25)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,y)
Z = np.zeros((len(y),len(x)))

for i in range(len(y)):
    damp = (i/float(len(y)))**2
    Z[i] = 5*damp*(1 - np.sqrt(np.abs(x/50)))
    Z[i] += np.random.uniform(0,.1,len(Z[i]))
ax.plot_surface(X, Y, Z, rstride=1, cstride=1000, color='w', shade=False, lw=.5)

ax.set_zlim(0, 5)
ax.set_xlim(-51, 51)
ax.set_zlabel("Intensity")
ax.view_init(20,-120)
plt.show()