large network layout and visualization

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large network layout and visualization

Started 2 years ago by tunamaccheese / 7 posts

tunamaccheese
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Can anyone recommend a software for large-network visualization?

I'm looking for something that meets the following requirements:
- runs on Windows XP
- accessible via an API (preferably Python), or at least accepts text-based input files (which I could create using Python)
- can handle large networks (order of thousands of nodes) and provide some kind of visualization (a large graphic file or some kind of zoomable interface).
- it would be nice if you could do some basic customization of the nodes and edges with labels, colors, or shapes.

I've heard of IGraph and NetworkX but I cannot get them to run on windows for the life of me. (in the case of IGraph, I can't get cairo installed, and in the case of NetworkX I cannot get pygraphviz installed).

Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thanks,

--Jordan
i2pi
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

You may want to try using igraph from within R. Install R, and then install the igraph R package, and you'll be able to use igraph from within R.

See: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/igraph/index.html
gourneau
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Howdy,

Ubigraph is so wonderful it almost made me salivate the first time I saw it : http://ubietylab.net/ubigraph.

The bad news, is that it will not display in Windows. The good news you could use a Linux VM to display the 3d rendering.

It can be accessed with Python via XML RPC in a way that is trivially easy.

You might want to look into http://www.secdev.org/projects/rtgraph3d/ as well. It is the graph lib used for http://www.secdev.org/projects/ipv6world/ which renders large networks.

I doubt you can get either to run in Windows. But, both of these programs are worth at least the effort of setting up a Linux VM. If you have no considered it before, try to setup a VM with http://www.virtualbox.org which is a decent opensource virtualizer, with 3d acceleration. Try that with a distro like Ubuntu, and you would be surprised how easy it is to use.

Good Luck!
nathany
FlowingData Editor
Posted 2 years ago #

a little bird told me that you might wanna check out yEd, ubigraph, skyrails, graphviz, libsna, or depending on motivation, processing, prefuse, flare, nodebox
dataspora
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

I highly recommend GraphViz.

http://www.graphviz.org/

I used it to generate networks like the one attached (it will take up anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on the number of nodes).

Full vectorized PDF version at:

http://gtp.bu.edu/mdriscol/gallery/shewy.global.network.pdf

[attachment=647,103]
tunamaccheese
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Thank you all for the wealth of suggestions. Nathan - thanks also for putting the question out on Twitter :-).

Some of those options make really beautiful graphs and I spent a lot of today trying them (lots of fun!).
seb
Member
Posted 2 years ago #

Hi,

Gephi meets exactly your needs, and the video tutorials makes it really easy to use : http://gephi.org/support/tutorials/

About supported file formats: http://gephi.org/support/supported-graph-formats/

cheers!