How to manually choose a tree's root?

Question

First of all: Thanks for this great tool!

I got a mind map which got a natural hierarchy: The central node (the term all the ideas derive from) should be the tree's root. Unfortunately the layouter always chooses a different node as root. I understand that this is smart because it minimizes the tree's depth. But is there a way to tell yEd not to be smart?

Answer 1

Can you please detail which layout algorithm you're using? Usually, the root node is the node which has only outgoing edges and all of yEd's tree layout algorithms detect and respect that node.

Comments

Hi Michael, thank you for your answer!
I used the Layout / Tree Tool; Layout Style "Directed" while allowing general graphs with straight-line connections. Your hint gave me the right direction: After changing the direction of one of the non-tree edges the algorithm found the right root node. Before this change a node with one incoming and four outgoing edges was chosen as root instead of the node with two outgoing edges / no incoming edge.
Best regards from Osnabrück, Philipp

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Hi Philipp, I'm glad you solved this problem. Indeed, I haven't thought about what happens for non-tree graphs.