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##Welcome to the HivePlotter wiki!
Below is a quick example illustrating how to create a hive plot using the user interface.
###An example using the GUI First, run the GUI in the command line using:
$ cd .../git/HivePlotter/scripts/gui
$ python gui.py
A window will pop-up like the one below.
###A test case among friends By default, the interface loads the path to input files for the test network called "friends". You can use the Browse buttons to input your own node and edge files. For this example, I want to display the Friends network using 3 axes, as is typically done in hive plots.
####Who is friends with whom? Check out the README page for some information on our "friends" network. We would like to explore this social network and see for example if certain types of people tend to be friends or enemies.
Let's now decide how to assign nodes (people) to axes and place the nodes along axes. These assignment and positioning rules are typically based on a node's network properties, such as degree. Since we may also want the node assignment and positioning rules to be based on node properties, we click Submit Network: the node properties become options in the rules' menus.
####A first hive plot To see how connected our friends are, let's choose to place the nodes on axis given their degree: nodes will be partitioned into 3 bins for low, medium, and high degree nodes. Next, let's choose to position the nodes on each axis given their height: the shorter people placed near the center and taller people placed near the outer end of the axis.
Click Create and open Hive. This action will create the HTML file in the temporary directory /git/HivePlotter/tmp/ and will open the file in your default web browser.
The hive plot looks like this:
####Making some pretty more complex hives That plot is fantastic! But a little boring. Let's say we want give the edges some colour given some properties. Let's select "relationship" in Edge Style Rule. The script detects only 2 possible values for the edge property (friends or enemies) and updates the menu for the number of colours to draw to be 2.
We also want to see if nodes on the same axis, in other words of with similar degree in this case, are connected so we select "True" under Double Axes.
Now what if we coloured the edges using a green palette and the property "friendship strength" binned in 3 colours.
Now that's a plot! Don't forget to hove over nodes and edges for some interactivity. Now I'll leave you to the best part: interpreting your plot.
###Saving the file The "Save hive" allows you to change the name of the plot from the defaulted "friends.html" as well as save it in an appropriate location.