WolframLang: Graphics Primitives

Graphics Primitive

• Graphics Primitive is a expression that represents a graphical element, such as line, circle, polygon, text, sphere, tube.
• You use graphics primitive to create graphics, programatically.
• All Plot functions or visualization functions that show graphics, are internally creating a list of graphics primitives, and return it as output.

some graphics primitives are 2D (e.g. Circle, Disk, Rectangle), some are 3D (e.g. Sphere, Cuboid, Tube), some both (e.g. Point, Line, Polygon).

2D Graphics Primitives

• Point[{45,41}]
• Line[{{331,754}, {557,550}, {888,272}}]
• Polygon[args]
• Text[args]
• Disk[args]
• Circle[args]
• Rectangle[args]

and more

3D Graphics Primitives

• Point[{44,90,48}]
• Line[{{92,402,927}, {183,643,101}, {229,39,925}}]
• Polygon[args]
• Sphere[args]
• Cuboid[args]
• Tube[args]

Complete list at SymbolicGraphicsLanguage

Graphics primitives are symbolic. By themselves they do nothing.

Line[{{0, 0}, {2, 1}}]

Graphics primitive usually are bundled together in a list. e.g.

{Line[arg], Line[arg], Polygon[arg], etc}

Displaying Graphics Primitives

To display graphics primitives, put them inside the functions Graphics or Graphics3D.

Graphics[Line[{{0, 0}, {2, 1}}]]

Graphics3D[Cuboid[{0, 0, 0}, {1, 2, 1}], Axes -> True]

Graphics3D[Table[Cuboid[{x, x, x}, {x, x, x} + 1], {x, 0, 5}], Axes -> True]