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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

You should see a window like this:

By default, the interface loads the path to input files for the test network called 'friends' and calls the hive plot 'hive1'. Use the "Browse" buttons to input your node and edge files. For this example, I want to display the Friends network using 3 axes. I also choose to double the axes so I can see edges between nodes on the same axes.

Next we need to decide how to assign nodes to axes and place the nodes on axes. These assignment and positioning rules are typically based on a node's network properties, such as degree. Since we would also like the node assignment and positioning rules to be based on node properties, we click "Submit Network": the node properties labelled included in the node csv file become options in the rules' menus. When a numerical property is chosen, node properties are partitioned into equally sized bins, with as many bins as there are axes. In this example, I choose to assign the nodes to axes given their degree and the script will create 3 bins for low, medium, and high degree nodes such that they contain same amount of nodes, plus or minus one. For categorical properties, like "Gender", the set of possible values is sorted alphabetically and assigned to an axes such that each axes contains the same amount of properties, again plus or minus one.

In the 'friends' network I chose to place the nodes on axis given their degree. I then chose to position the nodes on each axis given their gender. Sorter by alphabetical order, the nodes which are 'alien' will appear at the center, 'boy' in the middle and 'girl' towards the ends of the axes. Finally we select how we want to color the edges: either all the same color ('uniform') or using an edge property. In this example, I choose to color them by 'relationship'. Since the script detects only 2 possible values for the edge property 'relationship' (friends or enemies), it updates the menu for the number of colors to draw to 2.

Last but not least, select the node color and the edge color palette hue.

Click "Create and open Hive". This action will create the html file in the directory "/git/HivePlotter/tmp/" and will open the file in your default webbrowser. The "Save hive" allows you to change the name of the plot from the defaulted "hive1.html" and save it in an appropriate location.

The plot should look like the image below. The interface window remains open for you to try different placing and coloring rules and update the plot.

Happy hive making!