# Revision history [back]

### Strategies for drawing good graphs (graph theory)

Okay, if I want to have a nice drawing of a 5-cycle, it's built in. If I do

g = graphs.CycleGraph(5)
g.show()


it automatically draws it in a nice way. But, if I am looking at some random graph of order 11 that I want a nice picture of, for my dissertation, how am I supposed to get a nice picture? According to my question here, kcrisman says the graph editor is broken. That would have been a nice tool. My current strategy is to repeatedly have it show the graph and save it as a pdf until it gets into the format I want, i.e., run the following code over and over.

graph_plot = g.plot(vertex_colors={'white'})
graph_plot.show()
graph_plot.save('graph.pdf')


But, this doesn't always end up with the picture I really want. And, occasionally I want to do something like delete a vertex and draw the graph again, but now all of the sudden the plot behaves completely differently and it never looks anything like the previous drawing minus one vertex.

### Strategies for drawing good graphs (graph theory)

Okay, if I want to have a nice drawing of a 5-cycle, it's built in. If I do

g = graphs.CycleGraph(5)
g.show()


it automatically draws it in a nice way. But, if I am looking at some random graph of order 11 that I want a nice picture of, for my dissertation, how am I supposed to get a nice picture? According to my question here, kcrisman says the graph editor is broken. That would have been a nice tool. My current strategy is to repeatedly have it show the graph and save it as a pdf until it gets into the format I want, i.e., run the following code over and over.

graph_plot = g.plot(vertex_colors={'white'})
graph_plot.show()
graph_plot.save('graph.pdf')


But, this doesn't always end up with the picture I really want. And, occasionally I want to do something like delete a vertex and draw the graph again, but now all of the sudden the plot behaves completely differently and it never looks anything like the previous drawing minus one vertex.

So, what are some ways to get around this?