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

Question

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 1

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

Answer 2

dot -Tps input.dot > output.eps dot -Tpng input.dot > output.png 

PostScript output seems always there. I am not sure if dot has PNG output by default. This may depend on how you have built it.