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How to Create a Doughnut Chart

Table of Contents

What is a Doughnut Chart

Doughnut Charts or Donut Charts show how much parts contribute to the whole. They look like pies, but have a whole in the middle. Doughnut charts may be displayed with different drawing styles, in 3D, with exploded slices.

Our doughnuts may appear in different combinations as it follows:

  1. Single-Series Doughnut Chart – typical 2D/3D single doughnut with multiple slices.
  2. Rotated Doughnut Chart – regular doughnut to bulls-eye nested doughnuts conversion.
  3. Nested Doughnut Chart – one within the other, with arc version possible.
  4. Multiple Doughnut Charts – nested doughnuts split into single doughnut charts.
  5. Doughnut Gauge Chart – single-value representation with a two-slice doughnut.
  6. Variable Size Doughnut Chart – where each slice vary also in height.

Steps to Create a Doughnut Chart

Start Visual Xtractor or Data Xtractor. Connect to a database. Create or design a SQL query. Run the query and check the results.

  1. Display and enable the Chart query builder.
  2. Select one or more numeric data columns as Pie Charts – Doughnut.
  3. Select a column as textual Label.

Doughnut Chart Demo Queries

Look for the ready-to-use Doughnut Chart generated query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Charts > Pie Charts folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if not there.

Doughnut Chart
Other doughnut-related demo queries:

  • Nested Doughnut Chart
  • Doughnut Gauge
  • Variable Size Doughnut

Generated demo queries must work for any database, with no restriction. They use constant values generated on-the-fly and your database SQL engine, but do not depend on data from your tables, and never alter your database in any way.

Customize your Doughnut Chart

  1. Change the pie drawing style (to Soft Edge or Concave).
  2. Make it semi-transparent.
  3. Explode all slices (or just some of them).
  4. Show data labels inside, and as percent values.
  5. Hide some slices through the legend items.
  6. Switch to 3D.
  7. Nested doughnuts can be split into separate smaller single-series doughnut charts.
  8. Nested doughnuts can also be “rotated”, by swapping rows with columns.
  9. Single or multiple doughnuts may also appear as thin arcs.

Custom Doughnut Chart

Conclusion

  • Creating Doughnut Charts in Data Xtractor or Visual Xtractor is fast and trivial: set one or more numeric columns as Doughnut, and one textual column as Label – this is it.
  • All builtin powerful features of these chart type are common to most other charts: filtering series through the legend items, interactivity, monochrome or grayscale colors, rich axis and data label selections etc.
  • Switch to another builtin chart theme, or customize your own, for any possible color or other styles.