A Silverlight graph visualizer (updated)
We recently built this tool for use internally, but it ended up fairly generic and self-contained, so we thought it would be nice to release it for the community.
GRender takes as input a text-file (see example) of the nodes and edges in a graph, and then chooses a good onscreen layout via a physics simulation. It supports dragging nodes around so you can get a feel for the simulation dynamics, or "unkink" the layout if needed.
Two sample graphs are viewable now:
If you like the animated physics in this demo, you might want to check out the Silverlight physics simulation by Chris Cavanagh. There are other Silverlight projects which display graphs, too. One project by David Betz creates a graph from the results of .NET reflection. Another project, an Amazon search helper by Glenn Conner, appears to use a similar method for laying out graphs of related books.
If you're developing with Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1, you can download the source and try it on your own graphs.
Update: Thanks Jess Askey from Wyoming for updating GRender for Silverlight 2.0!
- Categories: cat11 open source silverlight
