# Extracting vector of contour lines from Makie.contour?

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/extracting-vector-of-contour-lines-from-makie-contour/104866
**Category:** Visualization
**Created:** [October 11, 2023, 4:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/extracting-vector-of-contour-lines-from-makie-contour/104866 "2023-10-11T16:48:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![rkube](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rkube/32/211198_2.png) [@rkube](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rkube)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2023, 4:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/extracting-vector-of-contour-lines-from-makie-contour/104866/1 "2023-10-11T16:48:52Z")

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Hi,  
I’d like to extract contour lines from a Makie contour plot as a vector, like the black lines in the plot here.

 ![plot_43](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/a/b/ab949300c6bfb36a2d43be2376fc819aff7bfc22.png)

Is there any way to do that?

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### Author: ![JonasWickman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@JonasWickman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/JonasWickman)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2023, 5:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/extracting-vector-of-contour-lines-from-makie-contour/104866/2 "2023-10-11T17:13:02Z")

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I’ve not been able to find this in the Makie documentation, so I’m not sure if this is considered Makie internals, but you can get contour lines by calling

```julia
cs = Makie.Contours.contours( x , y , Z , levels )

```

You then access the vertices (x-y pairs) for each contour line as

```julia
cs.contours[level_idx].lines[line_idx].vertices

```

This may not exactly solve your problem though, as it does not retrieve already plotted lines.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![rkube](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rkube/32/211198_2.png) [@rkube](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rkube)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2023, 5:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/extracting-vector-of-contour-lines-from-makie-contour/104866/3 "2023-10-11T17:37:43Z")

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Thanks, that’s exactly what I need. Just needed the contour lines, not necessarily the plot.