Ortho edges and ports - a partial work-around

[steveroush]

The ortho edge implementation does not handle ports (see Regarding graphviz's "orthogonal" edge routing - #2 by steveroush, [Dot] orthogonal edges in dot (#352) · Issues · graphviz / graphviz · GitLab, or spline = ortho produces unexpected output with ports (#1415) · Issues · graphviz / graphviz · GitLab)

Here is a link (Graphviz: fixOrtho - a work-around to allow ortho edges to connect to ports · GitHub) to a gvpr program that will often allow ortho edges to connect to ports.
It is easy, but not trivial to use:

1. run dot -Gsplines=true myFile.gv > myFile.dot (Use any layout engine. This will position all the nodes and ports)
2. run gvpr -cf fixOrtho.gvpr myFile.dot >myfileFixed.dot (This adds nodes and edges and alters existing edges)
3. run neato -n -Tpng myFileFixed.dot >myfileFixed.png (Creates viewable image)

Note: the commands above can also be run as a single pipeline.

This is modestly tested software (surprisingly complex). Please try it and comment on the gist page. If/when it settles down, it can become part of the Graphviz package it that is desired, though I consider this a temporary “fix”.

Here are three versions of the ports.gv file that is included in the Graphviz source. (The red edge components are just to show the changes)

[Tim-from-Akhetonics]

Hi @steveroush,

I am currently trying to plot a fairly large graph (100s of nodes) and later a larger graph (1000s of nodes). The graph has been partitioned into a 3x3 grid and merged back together using gvpack and some postprocessing though a Python script.

The merged result for a reduced complexity example with only 27 nodes is as follows:

pack_ext.dot:
[dot verbose=true engine=nop2]

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[/dot]

(Edit: [dot] tag doesn’t seem to work draw edges between subgraphs so here is an image of the graph)

I am now trying to use your code to get orthogonal edges that connect to the ports.

I adapted your steps as follows:

neato -n2 -Gsplines=true pack_ext.dot > tmp.dot
gvpr -cf fixOrtho.gvpr tmp.dot > tmp2.dot
neato -n -Tsvg tmp2.dot > pack.svg

However, I get the following error on the last step:

Warning: the bounding boxes of some nodes touch - falling back to straight line edges

I would be very grateful for any suggestions on how to address this.

Many thanks,
Tim

[steveroush]

I can’t find a way to extract your source. Could you embed it within 3 backticks (`) above & below. Like so

source code here

My guess is that you need a larger margin inside the clusters.
But just a guess until I can test with the source.

[magjac]

@Tim-from-Akhetonics

(Edit: [dot] tag doesn’t seem to work so here is an image of the graph)

It rendered fine after a page reload. I took the liberty to add the option verbose=true so the code became visible.

[Tim-from-Akhetonics]

Thanks Magnus

[Tim-from-Akhetonics]

Thanks so much for getting back to me and so quickly

After Magnus’s edit the source code should now be visible.

I have tried setting large margins, but it didn’t seem to help.

Now, I did get it to draw after changing the last step to:

neato -n -Goverlap=scale -Tsvg tmp2.dot > pack.svg

However, the problem I am now having is that the bounding boxes don’t scale with the subgraphs:

I can increase the margins of subgraphs, but I don’t know how to set a good value other than by trial-and-error and it gives me a lot of unused white space:

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[steveroush]

I can’t work on images (just source files), but:

• try wrapping this subgraph around all your clusters

{ margin=30     //  units = pt  probably more than needed
        // your subgraphs go here
}

• add ranksep=“.8” // units = inches probably more than needed
• setting overlap will probably never work, seems to get neato confused