About Simple Trellis Versus Advanced Trellis

When you create a trellis view, the first thing you do is choose between two subtypes: Simple Trellis and Advanced Trellis. The Simple Trellis subtype displays a single type of inner visualization, for example, all bar graphs. The inner visualization always uses a common axis, so that all inner graphs are viewed on the same scale. (This concept of a common axis is also referred to as a synchronized scale.) Having a common axis makes all graph markers easy to compare across rows and columns.

The Advanced Trellis subtype allows for display of multiple visualization types within its grid. An advanced trellis illustrating sales trends might show a grid containing numbers in the cells of one column (revenue, for example), while another column alongside the numbers column displays Spark Line graphs in its cells, and those Spark Line graphs visualize the same measure as represented by the numbers (again revenue, but over a time period). Next to that column, a different microchart might be displayed, such as a column of Spark Bar graphs that visualize a different measure, such as unit totals.

Each measure that is visualized is assigned a different inner graph type. Each cell of the grid is scaled independently.

Think of an advanced trellis as a pivot table with spark graphs inside its data cells. But, for each measure you add, you can optionally associate a dimension and render it as a microchart visualization. This makes an advanced trellis very different from a simple trellis. In a simple trellis, all of the measures are rendered in the same visualization, along with additional dimensions.