Colouring nodes in Network Viewer

Dear KNIMErs & community,

Does the colouring of nodes in the Network Viewer actually work for anybody? I managed to colour the background, but neither nodes nor edges - and I think I tried it all. If workable on your end, a sample workflow would be greatly (!) appreciated.

Many thanks,
E

Hi Ergonomist,

you have to add the color as a new color feature to the nodes and edges you want to colorize to the network first. I have attached a workflow to demonstrate this. I will also upload a more sophisticated workflow to the KNIME example server that will demonstrate more features (node icons, sizing, etc.) of the network viewer.

Bye,

Tobias

Amazing speed, many thanks! Does show up correctly, will analyse to understand better what I get wrong.

-- E

OK, got it: I didn't choose an ID column because the (normal) Feature Inserter doesn't mark this as obligatory. Is it ever *not* needed? Anyway, easily fixed if you know how.

Thanks again!
E

Hi Ergonomist,

using both feature inserter you can add features to

  • the network itself (node and edge id are empty)
  • nodes (node id is selected)
  • edges (edge id is selected)
  • end points of an edge e.g. the isTarget feature (node and edge id are selected)

I know it is a bit complicated. If you have a better solution just let me know.

Bye,

Tobias

Does my reputationof GUI pickiness precede me? :-)

I could imagine an (obligatory) dropdown asking you what you wish to add features to, conditionally activating or deactivating corresponding (obligatory-if-active) dropdowns to select nodes and/or edges.

It obviously means more clicks (unless you can safely assume that a sensible default would be, let's say, to want to colour the nodes, thereby covering 90 % of use cases), but it'll make things self-explanatory and intuitive.

By the way, it also bugs me to have to create a blank network with a separate node, just to populate it with tabular data. Why can't the "network in" ports be optional in this case? Or have a separate node for straight "create from table" creation like the View nodes have (in: data, out: viz of data).

Just my 2 cents. :)
-- E

Hi Ergonomist,

thanks for the valuable feedback. I especially like the idea with the optional network input port for the object inserter. This way you do not need to create a blank network and you also do not need to know yet another node.

Regarding the feature inserter nodes do you think it would be helpful if the node would display in the dialog what kind of feature is inserted depending on the selected id columns? This way the user does not need to perform an additional click but gets the immediate feedback what kind of feature is created

If I get the time I will add these features to KNIME 2.9.

If you have any suggestions please feel free to contact me or create a post in the forum. We are always happy to receive valuable feedback.

Thanks,

Tobias