Graphviz: How to go from .dot to a graph?

Nick Heiner picture Nick Heiner · Sep 29, 2009 · Viewed 453.1k times · Source

I can't seem to figure this out. I have a .dot file, which is valid according to the syntax. How do I use graphviz to convert this into an image?

(note that I'm on Windows, not linux)

Answer

Paul McMillan picture Paul McMillan · Sep 29, 2009

type: dot -Tps filename.dot -o outfile.ps

If you want to use the dot renderer. There are alternatives like neato and twopi. If graphiz isn't in your path, figure out where it is installed and run it from there.

You can change the output format by varying the value after -T and choosing an appropriate filename extension after -o.

If you're using windows, check out the installed tool called GVEdit, it makes the whole process slightly easier.

Go look at the graphviz site in the section called "User's Guides" for more detail on how to use the tools:

http://www.graphviz.org/documentation/

(See page 27 for output formatting for the dot command, for instance)

http://www.graphviz.org/pdf/dotguide.pdf