How to graph adjacency matrix using MATLAB

Question

I want to create a plot showing connections between nodes from an adjacency matrix like the one below.

gplot seems like the best tool for this. However, in order to use it, I need to pass the coordinate of each node. The problem is that I don't know where the coordinates should be, I was hoping the function would be capable of figuring out a good layout for me.

For example here's my output using the following arbitrary coordinates:

 A = [1 1 0 0 1 0;
      1 0 1 0 1 0;
      0 1 0 1 0 0;
      0 0 1 0 1 1;
      1 1 0 1 0 0;
      0 0 0 1 0 0];

 crd = [0 1;
        1 1;
        2 1;
        0 2;
        1 2;
        2 2];

 gplot (A, crd, "o-");

Which is hard to read, but if I play around with the coordinates a bit and change them to the following it becomes much more readable.

   crd = [0.5 0;
         0 1;
         0 2;
         1 2;
         1 1;
         1.5 2.5];

I don't expect perfectly optimized coordinates or anything, but how can I tell MATLAB to automatically figure out a set of coordinates for me that looks okay using some sort of algorithm so I can graph something that looks like the top picture.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As of R2015b, MATLAB now has a suite of graph and network algorithms. For this example, you can create an undirected graph object and then plot it using the overloaded plot function:

% Create symmetric adjacency matrix
A = [1 1 0 0 1 0;
     1 0 1 0 1 0;
     0 1 0 1 0 0;
     0 0 1 0 1 1;
     1 1 0 1 0 0;
     0 0 0 1 0 0];
% Create undirected graph object
G = graph(A);
% Plot
plot(G);