Layouts can help you quickly make sense of networks but dynamically changing graphs can sometimes be challenging to follow.

This demo shows how the expand function can be used to add new data to the chart, animating the positions of nodes in an intuitive way to help users keep track of incremental changes.

Try double-clicking anywhere on the background to add a new component or click on any node with to expand its connections. The new items will appear in the best available position in the existing chart.

The controls let you choose a layout and set a behaviour for expanding new data, which is determined by the fix option. The adaptive option gives optimum results - but you can also experiment with running a full layout (fix is set to 'none') or by fixing all existing nodes (fix is set to 'all').

Key functions used:

• chart.expand
• chart.layout