Comments on: “Follow the Money” Visio Sankey Diagram

By: STHBRDG

STHBRDG — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:09:45 +0000

This really looks nice! In regards to the Left to right flow, I noticed that if you turn on the “end point” arrows, they point leftward in some instances. The shapeText also points right to left. The only reason that I mention it is that the Wingdings font provides some arrow shapes as text characters. If you scale the text size to fit the line and set the transparency/ select the correct font shade, then they aren’t that big of a distraction and portray the linkage and flow that you are talking about.

If you mix the methods associated with text along connector shapes, then you can direct the arrow with the same curve of the Sankey line which looks nice.

FYI, there are many arrows, but I found Wingdings #240 to be suitable.

Does anyone think that there is merit to the concept of a glue contour line that has connections points at strategic locations for each Sankey line to make an attachment? I’ve read some of the randomization blogs and with some Bezzier curves and some math, you could achieve a fluid connection boundary. The contour would also serve as a nice point to justify/angle the text associated with the line.

By: Jon

Jon — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 09:10:20 +0000

Thanks for a great example of making complex data simple.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use something like this to report from a database – there’s something intrinsically understandable about this diagram that would take many more bar, pie and flow charts to acheive.

By: Chris Webb

Chris Webb — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:37:26 +0000

I am very glad this has gone down well with some. The thing that’s missing for me is any real feel for the direction of flow. We all know it’s left to right, but it’s not indicated in the diagram. To make this work for more complex flows (circuits) I have found that copying and pasting a thick line on top of itself and then formatting the top version to be a ‘wire-frame’ style arrow works pretty well. It breaks down when the lines get too narrow.

By: Egide

Egide — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:38:49 +0000

Just love it
Egide

By: Raphael

Raphael — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:17:52 +0000

Really impressive work! It needs a lot of patience to do this! I really like the design and colors used.

By: Marco

Marco — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:13:12 +0000

Wow, this was excactly what I was looking for. Didn’t know about sankey diagrams before.
Chris, many thanks for the time and effort put into this diagram!
Marco

By: Sankey Diagrams » Blog Archive » Follow the Money Sankey Diagram

Sankey Diagrams » Blog Archive » Follow the Money Sankey Diagram — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:27:58 +0000

[...] Visio Guy had another cool Sankey diagram on his blog last week. Credits go to Chris Webb of Woodland Trust, who created this using the line thickness [...]

By: Mark Nelson

Mark Nelson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:59:32 +0000

Great visuals! This is a pretty good way to get a fluid Sankey diagram. It gets me thinking about new ways to make this easier. Just thinking out loud, I wonder if this technique can be combined with the new List capability in Visio 2010 to good effect. Perhaps a Visio Guy reader will beat me to the working example.