Circular is a layouter that portraits interconnected ring and star topologies and is excellent for applications in:
Circular produces layouts that emphasize group and tree structures within a network. It creates node partitions by analyzing the connectivity structure of the network, and arranges the partitions as separate circles or disks. These circles are arranged in a radial tree layout fashion.
Controls which policy is used to partition the nodes of the graph. Each node partition will be arranged as a separate circle or disk. Available options are
Whether or not to act on selected nodes and edges that are connected to selected nodes only.
Whether to use existing layout information. If enabled, the algorithm tries to:
This option works best if the structural and layout changes are small, i.e. partition policy and partition layout style are kept.
Specifies how to place node labels.
This section influences the layout style, size, and compactness of the partitions themselves.
Determine the basic layout style with which the partition contents are arranged.
Whether or not to determine the radius of each circle in the layout automatically. An automatically chosen radius is usually the smallest possible radius that obeys Minimal Node Distance.
If Choose radius automatically is not set then this option determines the fixed radius for all circles in the resulting layout. Minimal Node Distance will be ignored in this case.
Determines the minimal distance between the borders of two adjacent nodes on a common circle. The smaller the distance the more compact the resulting layout. For the Disk layout style, this value is strictly observed only for nodes on the circle border, inner nodes may have a smaller distance. For the Organic Disk style, this value cannot be strictly guaranteed, but is observed as close as possible.
Specifies the edge routing policy that determines whether edges are routed internally or externally with respect to a single partition circle.
Determines the type of the nodes. The nodes of a partition are sorted according to their type.
Specifies the minimum distance that exterior edges keep to each other.
Specifies the minimum distance between the outer border of the circle partition and the arc path of exterior edges that run around the circle.
Specifies the preferred angle (in degrees) between adjacent segments of exterior edges at the same node. When the angle is zero, all exterior edges start/end with a segment of the same slope and, thus, overlap each other. The segment in this case is the extension of the line connecting the partition circle center with the respective node center.
Specifies the preferred length of the curve part that connects the first or last segment with the outer arc. An exterior edge consists of a straight part starting at the source node (or ending at the target node) and a main arc that runs around the exterior of the circle from source to target. A curve connects these two parts. Its length is configured by this setting.
Specifies the smoothness of the exterior edges which determines how many bend points are generated to approximate the curvature of the edge paths. The smoothness is defined to be a value between 0 and 1 where a higher value means smoother curves, and, thus, more bends.
Whether or not to enable the bundling of the edges. If enabled, the common parts of different edges are to some degree merged into a bundled part.
Determines how tightly the edges are merged/bundled if the Edge Bundling is enabled. The higher this value, the stronger the connection of the bundled edges.
This section influences the compactness of the tree-like components that this layouter produces. The tree-like structures are the parts of the layout that do not belong to the circularly arranged node groups.
This setting determines the angular range of the sector that will be reserved for the children of a root node. The possible angular range lies between 1 and 359. The remaining angular range (360-x) will be automatically used to accommodate the edge that connects to the root node.
The smaller the chosen value, the more one will gain the impression that the nodes drive away from their root nodes and the center of the graph.
Generally speaking, the compactness of the layout will decrease with smaller values. Very small values will lead to layouts that consume a lot of space.
Determines the minimal length of an edge that connects two nodes that lie on separate circles (tree-edges). The smaller the chosen value the more compact the resulting layout.
Whenever tree-edges connect to a node that lies on a circle together with other nodes, the layouter tries to direct that edge in such a way that its prolongation crosses through the center of the circle. This is not always possible though, for example, if multiple tree-edges connect to the same circle node.
This parameter determines the valid angular deviation from the optimal edge direction as described above. The bigger the chosen value, the more compact the resulting layout. If a value smaller than 90 degrees is chosen, the tree-edges might cross through the circularly arranged components.
This parameter influences the length of the tree-edges as it is computated by the layouter. The smaller the compactness factor, the shorter the tree-edges and the more compact the overall layout. The bigger the compactness factor the more difficult, and hence slower, the layout computation.
Determines the minimal distance between tree nodes.
If activated this option further increases compactness of the resulting layout but may introduces slight node overlaps.
Determines whether child nodes in a subtree structure have to be placed on a common circle. If this option is disabled, the resulting layout will be more compact.
The most compact layout will be achieved by choosing
or
as Partition Layout Style, small values for parameters
and big values for
If slight partition overlaps are acceptable, option
should be activated as well.