Circular

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 partitions nodes into groups by analyzing the connectivity structure of the network. The detected groups are laid out on separate circles. The circles themselves are arranged in a radial tree layout fashion.

General Tab

Layout Style

Controls which policy is used to group the nodes of the graph. Each group of nodes will be arranged on a separate circle. Available options are

BCC Compact
Each group will represent a so-called biconnected component of the graph. A biconnected component consists of nodes that are reachable by two edge disjoint paths. Nodes that belong to more than one biconnected component will be assigned exclusively to one group.
BCC Isolated
Groups will be formed as with BCC Compact with the difference that all nodes belonging to more than one biconnected component will be assigned an isolated group.
Single Cycle
All nodes will be arranged on a single circle.

Act on selection only

Whether or not to act on selected nodes and edges that are connected to selected nodes only.

Cycle Tab

This section influences the size and compactness of the circles formed by this layouter.

Minimal Node Distance

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.

Choose radius automatically

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.

Fixed radius

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.

Tree Tab

This section allows to influence the compactness of the tree-like components that this layouter produces. The tree-like structures are the parts of the layout that are not part of the circularly arranged node groups.

Preferred Child Wedge

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.

Minimal Edge Length

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.

Maximal Deviation Angle

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 more than one tree-edge connect to the same circle node.

This parameter determines the allowed 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 then the tree-edges might cross through the circularly arranged components.

Compactness Factor

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.

Allow Overlaps

If activated this option further increases compactness of the resulting layout but potentially introduces slight node overlaps.

Hints

The most compact layout will be achieved by