How to make data points in a 3D python scatter plot look like "discs" instead of "spheres"
I actually was able to do this using the matplotlib.patches library, creating a patch for every data point, and then making it whatever shape I wanted with the help of mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.art3d.
In a standard 3D python plot, each data point is, by default, represented as a sphere in 3D.  For the data I'm plotting, the z-axis is very sensitive, while the x and y axes are very general, so is there a way to make each point on the scatter plot spread out over the x and y direction as it normally would with, for example, s=500, but not spread at all along the z-axis?  Ideally this would look like a set of stacked discs, rather than overlapping spheres.  
Any ideas?  I'm relatively new to python and I don't know if there's a way to make custom data points like this with a scatter plot.