How to directly use Axes3D from matplotlib in standard plot to avoid flake8 error

Question

When using the typical 3D plot like so:

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

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')

flake8 reports the expected error:

./tools.py:62:9: F401 'mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.Axes3D' imported but unused

I know it can be avoided using the # NOQA comment. But is there a different way to formulate the projection in the figure so that the Axes3D object is used?

Answer 1

If this is only about actually using the import at least once, you can do

ax = fig.gca(projection=Axes3D.name)

as "3d" is the name of the Axes3D class by which it is registered to the projection list.