The Layout Editor
The Layout Editor is a powerful tool in the creation of both analysis and publication graphics. It is designed to create data display layouts which can contain one or more graphical objects, such as graphs, text and lines. It works like a page layout program, but the graphs are live and will be updated to reflect any change in the data or gating. The page describing the Layout Editor controls explains the tool palette, commands and options associated with the editor. The page describing layout elements also contains useful information about FlowJo's myriad presentation capabilities.
Using the Layout Editor, you can generate graphical reports that can do any of the following:
- Show multiple different graphs from the same gated subset
- Create a report mixing graphs from different subsets or samples
- Overlay dot plots, histograms, or Kinetics analyses
- Mix statistics, text items, tables, boxes, lines, and other items with your graphs
- Generate a report for every sample in the workspace based on the layout of one sample and its analysis.
Layouts are live, in that the graphic window is updated whenever any of the gates or statistics change (because you moved a gate, or change an analysis, etc.). You never have to worry about whether to update the reports or not; FlowJo will do so automatically!
The Layout Editor knows how to iterate or batch , that is, to create the same layout for many different samples based on the layout of one sample. It can iterate over every sample in a group, or via Panels where graphs from different samples are combined in a single layout.
Iterated layouts can be previewed as they will print or animated as frames in a Quicktime movie. The Layout editor can save, print or export the layout as a graphic file, as well as save it in HTML for export to the web.
Because a layout contains many different graphs and therefore can take a long time to generate, FlowJo supports placeholders to make the editor more responsive while creating the layouts.
An example can be studied in the FlowJo advanced tutorial.
See Also: Workspace, Table Editor, Groups