How to Create a Radial Bar Chart

Table of Contents

What is a Radial Bar Chart

Radial Bar charts are variations of horizontal Bar Charts, in which the XY plot is transformed into a circular polar area, with all bars starting at 12 o’clock and continuing clockwise. The maximum arc size of a radial bar is 270^o.

Single-series charts have one single data column set as Radial Bar. Bars could all have the same or different colors. The maximum individual value is translated into an arc of 270^o, with the lengths of the other arcs proportional to this value.

Multi-series charts have more than one data column set as Radial Bar, and each series usually gets the same different color. Our multi-series Radial Bar charts are always stacked. Grouped series were possible, but they may introduce too much clutter and we decided to avoid them. The maximum sum is translated into an arc of 270^o, with the lengths of the other arcs proportional to this value. Stacked bars can be normalized to 100%, with all sums of stacked bars at 270^o, for typical Full Stacked charts.

Steps to Create a Radial Bar Chart

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

Display and enable the Chart query builder.
Select your first numeric data column as Radial Charts – Radial Bar.
For multi-series charts, select other data columns with the same chart type.
Select one optional column as chart Label.
Select one other optional data column as chart Category, to have different bar colors.

Radial Bar Demo Query

This is a great alternative to learn about and play with this type of chart, if you don’t want to create it from scratch.

Look for the ready-to-use single-series Radial Bar Chart generated query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Charts > Circular Charts folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if not already there.

The 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.

Stacked Radial Bar Demo Query

Look for the ready-to-use multi-series Stacked Radial Bar Chart generated query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Charts > Circular Charts folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if not already there.

Click on the Use Full 100% toolbar button to show a Full Stacked Radial Bar chart, will the sums of all stacked radial bars at 270^o.

Reversed Radial Bar Charts

Any single or multi-series Radial Bar chart can swap the input data rows with the columns. These Reversed Radial Bar charts show now a different layout, after a single mouse button click. Here are the reversed chart images of the three top charts at the beginning of this article:

Radial Bar Chart with Category

For single-series charts, you may select another data column as chart Category, in which case the chart legend will be populated with category items. A multi-color Radial Bar with Category chart will show all bars of a category item with the same color. This makes it easy to select only those items to be displayed.

Look for the ready-to-use single-series Radial Bar with Category Chart generated demo query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Charts > Category Charts folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if the demo query is not already there.

Customize your Radial Bar Chart

The chart toolbar at the bottom has many options you may change with one single click, to alter the graph. Here is just an example of what you can further do with this type of chart:

Make it single-color, to use the same first palette color for all bars.
Change the drawing style (to Soft Edge) or make the whole graph monochrome.
Show all circular bars as thin arcs.
Show values as data labels.
Click on legend items to hide some bars.

Conclusion

Creating Radial Bar charts in Data Xtractor or Visual Xtractor is fast, simple and trivial: set one or more numeric columns as Radial Bar charts, one optional column as Label, and that’s it!
With one single click, switch rows with columns to get a different layout for the same data.
Add a Category column to single-series charts, to filter all bars that belong to category items.
Many builtin powerful features of these chart type are common to most other charts: filtering series through the legend items, interactivity, monochrome or grayscale colors etc.
Switch to another builtin chart theme, or customize your own, for any possible color or other styles.