Represent Connections Between Coordinates on a Map Visualization

You can represent connections between two geographic points or areas by using a dynamic line map layer type.

The dynamic line map layer automatically generates lines between specified start and end coordinates on a map. For example, you might want to visualize movement patterns between cities, illustrate flight routes between airports, or show business relationships, or logistics routes between countries or warehouses.

The Dynamic Line map layer type has two categories:
  • Start Node: Defines origin coordinates or a geographic location.
  • End Node: Defines destination coordinates or a geographic location.
The Start Node and End Node can contain the following map data formats:
  • Latitude and Longitude: Use latitude and longitude coordinates for each node.
  • Cities or Countries: Use named cities or countries as coordinates for each node.
  • Points or Polygons: Use individual points or polygons (geographic shapes) as coordinates for each node.
  1. On the Home page, select a workbook, click Actions, and then select Open.
  2. Create a map visualization.
  3. Click Layer options in the Category (Location) section of the Grammar pane, click Layer Type and choose Dynamic Line.
    The new layer shows the Category (Start Node) and Category (End Node), created for a Dynamic Line layer.
    Description of maps_dynamlines_layercat.png follows
    Description of the illustration maps_dynamlines_layercat.png

  4. Drag and drop element attributes from the dataset into the Category (Start Node) and Category (End Node).
    For example, to generate dynamic lines between a source airport and all of its destination airports, you would drag and drop Source_Airport_Latitude and Source_Airport_Longitude into Category (Start Node), and then drag and drop Destination_Airport_Latitude and Destination_Airport_Longitude into Category (End Node).
    Description of maps_dynamlines_layercat_latlong.png follows
    Description of the illustration maps_dynamlines_layercat_latlong.png

  5. Click Save.
    The map displays dynamic lines that represent the start and end coordinates from a specific airport, to all of its destination airports.
    Description of maps_dynamlines_layercat_latlong_result.png follows
    Description of the illustration maps_dynamlines_layercat_latlong_result.png