Alignment (9.0)

Overview & Context

The Alignment functions are available from the Node Contextual Menu and allow you to arrange nodes on the Graph Panel to achieve a structured layout.
If a subset of nodes is selected, the Alignment functions only apply to the selection, otherwise, all nodes are rearranged.

Horizontal Distribution places the selected nodes evenly spaced along a horizontal axis.
With BayesiaLab 9, the original order of nodes is maintained, i.e., the nodes are no longer rearranged in alphabetic order from left to right.

Vertical Distribution places the selected nodes evenly spaced along a vertical axis.
With BayesiaLab 9, the original order of nodes is maintained, i.e., the nodes are no longer rearranged in alphabetic order from top to bottom.

The Temporal Index Distribution function creates horizontal layers of nodes based on their Temporal Indices.
The layers of nodes are arranged from top to bottom in increasing order of the Temporal Index values, i.e., nodes that are "earlier" in the temporal order are above nodes that have a "later" index.
Each layer consists of nodes with the same Temporal Index, and nodes within each layer are evenly spaced horizontally.
Unlike the Temporal Index Layout algorithm, the order of the nodes in each layer remains as is and is not reordered alphabetically from left to right.

To apply any of the Alignment functions, bring up the Node Contextual Menu by right-clicking on a node.
Then, select Alignment > ...
If no node is selected, the Alignment function will apply to all nodes.
If you select a subset of nodes first, the Alignment function will only apply to the selected nodes.

To highlight the difference between the Temporal Index Layout algorithm and the Temporal Index Distribution algorithm, we compare them side-by-side and also show the original network for reference: