geom_edge_bundle_force: Bundle edges using force directed edge bundling

In ggraph: An Implementation of Grammar of Graphics for Graphs and Networks

Bundle edges using force directed edge bundling

Description

This geom performs force directed edge bundling to reduce visual clutter. It uses a self-organizing approach to bundling in which edges are modeled as flexible springs that can attract each other without the need of a hierarchy. Be aware that this bundling technique works globally and thus may bundle edges that is otherwise unrelated together. Care should be taken when interpreting the resulting visual. An alternative approach to edge bundling that uses the graph topology is provided by geom_edge_bundle_path().

Usage

geom_edge_bundle_force(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = get_edges(),
  position = "identity",
  arrow = NULL,
  n = 100,
  force = 1,
  n_cycle = 6,
  cuts_start = 1,
  step = 0.04,
  cuts_new = 2,
  n_iter = 50,
  iter_new = 2/3,
  threshold = 0.6,
  eps = 1e-08,
  lineend = "butt",
  linejoin = "round",
  linemitre = 1,
  label_colour = "black",
  label_alpha = 1,
  label_parse = FALSE,
  check_overlap = FALSE,
  angle_calc = "rot",
  force_flip = TRUE,
  label_dodge = NULL,
  label_push = NULL,
  show.legend = NA,
  ...
)

geom_edge_bundle_force2(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = get_edges("long"),
  position = "identity",
  arrow = NULL,
  n = 100,
  force = 1,
  n_cycle = 6,
  cuts_start = 1,
  step = 0.04,
  cuts_new = 2,
  n_iter = 50,
  iter_new = 2/3,
  threshold = 0.6,
  eps = 1e-08,
  lineend = "butt",
  linejoin = "round",
  linemitre = 1,
  label_colour = "black",
  label_alpha = 1,
  label_parse = FALSE,
  check_overlap = FALSE,
  angle_calc = "rot",
  force_flip = TRUE,
  label_dodge = NULL,
  label_push = NULL,
  show.legend = NA,
  ...
)

geom_edge_bundle_force0(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = get_edges(),
  position = "identity",
  arrow = NULL,
  force = 1,
  n_cycle = 6,
  cuts_start = 1,
  step = 0.04,
  cuts_new = 2,
  n_iter = 50,
  iter_new = 2/3,
  threshold = 0.6,
  eps = 1e-08,
  lineend = "butt",
  show.legend = NA,
  ...
)

Arguments

mapping	Set of aesthetic mappings created by ggplot2::aes() or ggplot2::aes_(). By default x, y, xend, yend, group and circular are mapped to x, y, xend, yend, edge.id and circular in the edge data.
data	The return of a call to get_edges() or a data.frame giving edges in correct format (see details for for guidance on the format). See get_edges() for more details on edge extraction.
position	Position adjustment, either as a string naming the adjustment (e.g. "jitter" to use position_jitter), or the result of a call to a position adjustment function. Use the latter if you need to change the settings of the adjustment.
arrow	Arrow specification, as created by grid::arrow().
n	The number of points to create along the path.
force	The spring force during bundling
n_cycle	number of iteration cycles
cuts_start	initial number of edge divisions
step	initial step size
cuts_new	factor for how many new division points to add after a cycle
n_iter	number of iteration steps per cycle
iter_new	factor of how to decrease the number of iterations per cycle
threshold	threshold for considering two edges to be interacting
eps	tolerance
lineend	Line end style (round, butt, square).
linejoin	Line join style (round, mitre, bevel).
linemitre	Line mitre limit (number greater than 1).
label_colour	The colour of the edge label. If NA it will use the colour of the edge.
label_alpha	The opacity of the edge label. If NA it will use the opacity of the edge.
label_parse	If TRUE, the labels will be parsed into expressions and displayed as described in grDevices::plotmath().
check_overlap	If TRUE, text that overlaps previous text in the same layer will not be plotted. check_overlap happens at draw time and in the order of the data. Therefore data should be arranged by the label column before calling geom_text(). Note that this argument is not supported by geom_label().
angle_calc	Either 'none', 'along', or 'across'. If 'none' the label will use the angle aesthetic of the geom. If 'along' The label will be written along the edge direction. If 'across' the label will be written across the edge direction.
force_flip	Logical. If angle_calc is either 'along' or 'across' should the label be flipped if it is on it's head. Default to TRUE.
label_dodge	A grid::unit() giving a fixed vertical shift to add to the label in case of angle_calc is either 'along' or 'across'
label_push	A grid::unit() giving a fixed horizontal shift to add to the label in case of angle_calc is either 'along' or 'across'
show.legend	logical. Should this layer be included in the legends? NA, the default, includes if any aesthetics are mapped. FALSE never includes, and TRUE always includes. It can also be a named logical vector to finely select the aesthetics to display.
...	Other arguments passed on to layer(). These are often aesthetics, used to set an aesthetic to a fixed value, like colour = "red" or size = 3. They may also be parameters to the paired geom/stat.

Aesthetics

geom_edge_bundle_force and geom_edge_bundle_force0 understand the following aesthetics. Bold aesthetics are automatically set, but can be overwritten.

• x

• y

• xend

• yend

• edge_colour

• edge_width

• edge_linetype

• edge_alpha

• filter

geom_edge_bundle_force2 understand the following aesthetics. Bold aesthetics are automatically set, but can be overwritten.

• x

• y

• group

• edge_colour

• edge_width

• edge_linetype

• edge_alpha

• filter

geom_edge_bundle_force and geom_edge_bundle_force2 furthermore takes the following aesthetics.

• start_cap

• end_cap

• label

• label_pos

• label_size

• angle

• hjust

• vjust

• family

• fontface

• lineheight

Computed variables

index

The position along the path (not computed for the *0 version)

Edge variants

Many geom_edge_* layers comes in 3 flavors depending on the level of control needed over the drawing. The default (no numeric postfix) generate a number of points (n) along the edge and draws it as a path. Each point along the line has a numeric value associated with it giving the position along the path, and it is therefore possible to show the direction of the edge by mapping to this e.g. colour = after_stat(index). The version postfixed with a "2" uses the "long" edge format (see get_edges()) and makes it possible to interpolate node parameter between the start and end node along the edge. It is considerable less performant so should only be used if this is needed. The version postfixed with a "0" draws the edge in the most performant way, often directly using an appropriate grob from the grid package, but does not allow for gradients along the edge.

Often it is beneficial to stop the drawing of the edge before it reaches the node, for instance in cases where an arrow should be drawn and the arrowhead shouldn't lay on top or below the node point. geom_edge_* and geom_edge_*2 supports this through the start_cap and end_cap aesthetics that takes a geometry() specification and dynamically caps the termini of the edges based on the given specifications. This means that if end_cap = circle(1, 'cm') the edges will end at a distance of 1cm even during resizing of the plot window.

All ⁠geom_edge_*⁠ and geom_edge_*2 have the ability to draw a label along the edge. The reason this is not a separate geom is that in order for the label to know the location of the edge it needs to know the edge type etc. Labels are drawn by providing a label aesthetic. The label_pos can be used to specify where along the edge it should be drawn by supplying a number between 0 and 1. The label_size aesthetic can be used to control the size of the label. Often it is needed to have the label written along the direction of the edge, but since the actual angle is dependent on the plot dimensions this cannot be calculated beforehand. Using the angle_calc argument allows you to specify whether to use the supplied angle aesthetic or whether to draw the label along or across the edge.

Edge aesthetic name expansion

In order to avoid excessive typing edge aesthetic names are automatically expanded. Because of this it is not necessary to write edge_colour within the aes() call as colour will automatically be renamed appropriately.

Author(s)

David Schoch

References

Holten, D. and Wijk, J.J.V. (2009). Force‐Directed Edge Bundling for Graph Visualization. Computer Graphics Forum (Blackwell Publishing Ltd) 28, no. 3: 983-990. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01450.x

See Also

Other geom_edge_*: geom_edge_arc(), geom_edge_bend(), geom_edge_bundle_minimal(), geom_edge_bundle_path(), geom_edge_density(), geom_edge_diagonal(), geom_edge_elbow(), geom_edge_fan(), geom_edge_hive(), geom_edge_link(), geom_edge_loop(), geom_edge_parallel(), geom_edge_point(), geom_edge_sf(), geom_edge_span(), geom_edge_tile()

Examples

# (not necessarily an insightful use)
ggraph(highschool) +
  geom_edge_bundle_force(n_cycle = 2, threshold = 0.4)

ggraph documentation built on May 29, 2024, 2:32 a.m.