find me a diagramming program that does this

Basically, a friend and I are trying to draw up a diagram of which of our friends have slept with whom, so I need a program that can draw multiple connections to and from each node. Free would be preferable.

Many of the microsoft products can do this. Word, Visio, Powerpoint. Those aren’t free any more, but maybe something comes with your computer that already does that.

You’re looking for graph vizualisation software.

That might be it. Id like to make each name a variable (or whatever you call it), and have a list of names associated with it. Then have the app automatically draw out the connections.

Graphviz.

I think that is what I want, but criminy, that thing is hard to use. While I attempt to figure it out, does anyone know of a more user-friendly app?

The OP is clearly how the word problems I solved when learning graph theory should have been stated. “Prove the following: in a swingers party of 6 people, there are either a group of three people, all of whom have had sex with each other, or a group of three people, none of whom have had sex together. This is the Ramses number, R_2(6). Extra credit: A man selling trojans is going from person to person vending his wares…”

Make sure you don’t settle for something simple. If you have a truly adventurous group of friends, you may find yourself in need of directed graphs or edge-weights.

Trust me, this graph is getting very complicated. But using Graphviz, I have to put in each entry (no pun intended) individually. Id rather have it work the way i described it earlier.

I’d probably just use powerpoint; most of the shape objects have multiple nodes to which you can attach directional connectors; perhaps you could make the chart extra-detailed by assigning a shape per person and a node per organ/orifice; the connections would then detail the exact pattern of activity.

Well, in my circle the graph looks like this.
A -------- B
C -------- D
E -------- F

Apparently, I have a quieter circle of friends than others do :slight_smile:

Judging by my graph, my circle is more of a spider/Ouroboros hybrid.

If it’s sufficiently complex, there are graph libraries available (BGL and its ports) that can import Graphviz representations. This would have the benefit of allowing you to run various algorithms on the graph, such as shortest-path, partitioning, robustness metrics, etc.

Or, on the other hand, you can just say “close enough to a K-graph” and draw a picture of a K-graph with the number of nodes equal to the number of friends.