That is a great idea. I would love that too
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+1
Lock and save nodes position in graph view would make the software number one in its category.
You could even use it as a geographical map…
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+1 big time
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+1
It would be really useful option
+1
It is the most important navigating feature
++++1.
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+++ It would be very useful to have this feature.
+1
I think this could open up new methods for browsing notes and discovering connections.
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+1 Would be very great.
+1 it will allow more easily manage big networks
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I would love this +1
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I’ve been thinking greatly about what value obsidian adds once you have some enormous amounts of nodes, and I’m starting to realise once the number of notes exceeds what you can ‘recognise’ and remember, it becomes very difficult to figure out where to connect a new piece of information.
ie; If your system is that when you add a note, you always link it to a pre-existing idea. Once you have 10-20k notes, How do you find the exact note to link the idea to? You could use search features etc, but you’re left with the same problems, what keywords? What tags?
Do you even remember what’s in the notes? How do you know which of the 20,000 to go back to read today? etc.
I think being able to ‘lock-geographically’ certain nodes in the graph view, or even lock ALL of them, it could have an insanely interest effect on huge graphs. It could allow you to inadvertently build a visualised roman-room technique of your knowledge.
Human minds can’t keep track of 20k individual chunks of text, but they can keep track of that much location information.
eg. I know that this particular note is top-left of the MoC, three branches down, past the X cluster, and the 3 point node that looks like a chicken’s foot.
Being able to visually remember ‘where’ your information is located I think would be a completely game-changer in terms of merging your obsidian ‘brain’ with your own brain, and allow you to subliminally cultivate a roman room of sorts of ALL of your notes.
Being able to talk about the ‘passage’ between topic X, and topic Y as a consistent ‘geographical’ feature of your map, would provide your mind an extremely strong background context to all your knowledge that would grow with you adding to it organically.
I don’t know what the technical complexities of doing this are for the graph view. But I think this would be a feature that is far more than just a ‘visual-coolness’ improvement.
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That is indeed a relevant question or request and is in my opinion related to usage of links and/or tags:
- Links: Thematic affinity or ›proximity‹ of specific notes could/should be realised using links with different ›weight‹, i.e. connectivity strenght. At the moment, there’s only one ›type‹/weight of links. This way, one could group/connect specific notes with one another. This could also provide the possibility to realise note sequences (Zettelfolgen) as it existed in Luhmann’s early workflow process.
- Tags: Normally you would tag notes with thematic affinity. There’s also the possibility (which I strongly recommend) to use nested tags. As far as I know there’s no possibility to activate a specific »force« for notes that share the same (sub-)tag. Such a feature could solve your problem: The strength of such an additional force would depend on the ›proximity‹ to another tag.
- Sharing the same subtag would result in a strong force.
- Sharing the same main tag would result in a moderate force.
- Not sharing any tags wouldn’t result in any force.
By the way: It is possible to color the notes in the graph according to a specific tag.
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+1 . Now I’m looking for an alternative because of the lack of this.
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+1 really need this feature, i want to see the graph and know with a glance where do i have to look
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+1, pretty please
The ability to pin nodes in graph view would be amazing. Having a toggle per node would be great - then the user can set specific nodes as fixed and let the graph flow around them.
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+1, this would be of tremendous value to me
+1 - this would be a great feature.
Wondering if the request could be split up into two steps:
- Keep layout the same when there are no changes to nodes/edges
- Allow users to rearrange layout + save changes to layout.
I feel step 1 could be implemented relatively easily by using a seed for the layout of the graph. Would this already provide value for users who would like 2 as well?
PS. Linking to this thread which contains similar topics but has less activity.
PPS. I’m not sure how saving node positions would work. As new nodes/edges are created, the layout would have to change eventually, no? So perhaps fixing the position of just a few nodes (relative to the screen) could be a solution.
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