Plotting a graph in layered fashion

I am working with a digraph G of the carbon flow between creatures in the Florida Bay. Each creature has been assigned what is referred to as its trophic level which is a numerical value that attempts of quantify its hierarchical level in the food chain. These tropic levels have been entered into the node table as G.Nodes.TrophicLevel. I would like to use the MATLAB command plot(G, 'layout' 'layered') but I want the layers to be determined by the nodes' trophic level. Is there a way to do this?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

[Christine Tobler]

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to do this with the 'layered' layout. I'll make a note of your need for this.

For now, you could try to use

plot(G, 'YData', G.Nodes.TrophicLevel, 'XData', rand(numnodes(G), 1))

which will plot the nodes on the correct level, but just give them arbitrary x coordinates.

[Kamal Premaratne]

Thanks Christine. Yes, I was thinking along the same lines, but I was thinking of picking the same x-coordinate so that the vertices are located along a vertical line. But random x-corrdinates (as you had suggested) might be a better option. I have to check.

And, yes, please make a note of this. It might be agood option to include in an upcoming update.

Thanks again.