Can open excel file & keep relative positions among edges in flowchart layout same as the order in excel file?

Question

I am importing the graph data from an excel file. I wish the order of the nodes/edges to remain simmilar to what I have in the excel file but yEd scrambles the nodes and edges a ittle bit. I have, for example, a series of node pairs connected by one single edge. It looks like a ladder but he rungs (edges) are not displayed in the same order as they appear in the excel file. Instead, a lot of other parts of the excel file, not connected to these nodes, appear in beween the rungs of the ladder. I suppose the sofware does this to build more compact layout. Can we bypass this optimization?

Answer 1

Well, as of yEd 3.13, you can choose "None" as initial arrangement (see option "Layout" on tab "Presentation" in the Excel Import settings). This will result in all your nodes in one place and you may place them manually as you like.

Alternatively, use "Hierachical" for initial arrangement, then manually adjust the relative locations as desired, then run "Layout" -> "Hierarchical" with option "Use Drawing As Sketch" enabled.

Aside from the above, it depends very much on the algorithm chosen for initial arrangement how much you may influence the calculated position of the elements.