How do I arrange my nodes both in a circle and in alphabetical sequence?

Question

I have 181 nodes for the sake of making a sociogram but now that I've got them all connected to the main node and hit Layout > Circular, my main node is in the center and all the other nodes are arranged around the edge in a random order. It's an absolute pain to read such a large chart like this and having to hunt down each name!

Some additional things to mention is that 1) all of my edge/arrow labels seem to be hidden now that I've hit the circularize button and I'd very much like them back and 2) while I *do* like the fact my main node is in the center of all of them, I don't care if it has to get shunted over to the edge of a circle as well and it may also even work better that way anyway all things considered.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the circular layout algorithm does not offer a way to specify an order for the nodes.

Moreover, the circular layout algorithm simply ignores edge labels, so I am at quite a loss wrt what might have happened here.

In general, if you do not like a layout result or a side effect of a layout calculation, your best (and for many cases probably your only) option is to undo ("Edit" -> "Undo") the layout calculation.

Comments

Crud. I was hoping the form answer I saw on google would be outdated since this question was asked in 2011. This is also extra annoying because I kinda saved last night and opened the file again to work on it real quick this morning so.... now I have to scramble them all I guess? It's a shame that there's no way to specify node orders as a feature because this is such a wonderfully versatile charting software I've only recently found and it's been working terrifically for things like worldbuilding as well.

EDIT: forgot to say thanks for the help!