Conceptual question on mixing arrangement types within the same diagram – fiddling a bit this morning I have a basic setup creating either a classic “mesh” network with X nodes (circular arrangement) or a hierarchical view (tree arrangement).

I’d like to be able to have a single presentation that can mix these – think a migration process of moving from mesh to hierarchy here – so a chunk of the nodes arranged with a circular arrangement (mesh) and a chunk of nodes arranged with a tree view (hierarchy) – connected via a bridgehead of sorts.  Nodes are migrated over one by one kind of a thing.

The arrangement seems to be applied at the diagram level and a single diagram view only accepts one diagram (although one diagram can span multiple diagram views) – so am I thinking of this incorrectly or is there a better approach to the problem I’m trying to solve?

Thanks much.

cool - I'll go wander through that example project for a bit.

thanks.

Regarding mixing the layouts, CompositeLayout seems designed to apply the same layout for subgraphs indeed, but there is some built-in tree recognition and you can apply separate layouts by setting the SubtreeLayout and SubgraphLayout properties:

var l = new CompositeLayout();
l.PartitionMethod = PartitionMethod.Custom;
l.CustomPartition = new List<DiagramNodeCollection> { set1, set2 };
//l.CustomLayout = new LayoutSubgraph(ArrangeSub);
l.MasterLayout = new LayeredLayout { Orientation = MindFusion.Diagramming.Layout.Orientation.Horizontal };
l.SubgraphLayout = new CircularLayout();
l.SubtreeLayout = new TreeLayout { Type = TreeLayoutType.Radial, IgnoreLinkDirection = true };
l.Arrange(diagram); 

Alternatively if using a custom layout delegate, you'd need some way to discover which set the provided items belong to:

private bool ArrangeSub(Diagram diagram, DiagramItemCollection items)
{
	if (set1.Contains(items[0] as DiagramNode))
		new CircularLayout().Arrange(diagram, items);
	else
		new TreeLayout { Type=TreeLayoutType.Radial, IgnoreLinkDirection = true }.Arrange(diagram, items);
	return true;
} 

Both methods create the image below with these sets:

set1 = new DiagramNodeCollection();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
	set1.Add(diagram.Factory.CreateShapeNode(0, 0, 8, 8));

for (int i = 0; i < 9; i++)
	for (int j = i + 1; j < 10; j++)
		diagram.Factory.CreateDiagramLink(set1[i], set1[j]);

set2 = new DiagramNodeCollection();
for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
	set2.Add(diagram.Factory.CreateShapeNode(0, 0, 8, 8));

for (int i = 1; i < 20; i++)
	diagram.Factory.CreateDiagramLink(set2[i / 2], set2[i]);

diagram.Factory.CreateDiagramLink(set1[0], set2[0]);
 

I'm not sure what you mean by "classic mesh network with X nodes (circular arrangement)" though, how it should be different form CircularLayout?