Dashboard pie chart start angle - How does it work?

[LJuliusson]

Can anyone give me details on how the start angle works? I can't find a good angle to have all my labels display between various filters, some work and some don't, and it might be helpful to understand how the setting works. Thanks in advance.

Lara

[jcarlson · Accepted solution]

The start angle is the number of degrees clockwise from "west" to "start" the chart. I'm not sure why the pie chart's 0 degree position is to the left like that, it would make more sense to begin at the top, like with compass bearings...

The "start" of your chart is defined by the sorting settings on the main "data" tab. Here's a made up chart with the default sorting and a starting angle of 0. Category "D" is the top row in my table, so it shows up first.

And here's sorting by the value from largest to smallest, setting the start angle to 90.

And here's sorting alphabetically, with a start angle of 217.

Hopefully that helps illustrate the setting a bit.

[LJuliusson]

Thank you Josh, that totally makes sense, and was a huge help. For some reason the sorting order I have in my table doesn't hold when I don't sort for all of my state categories. I have my data ordered in my table 0-2, 3-5, 6-10 and 11 or more and the first category "-ALL" gets sorted. If I do sort, it works for all states, but then of course I get 0-2, 11 or more, 3-5, and 6-10 which doesn't look great. At least then I can set a start angle that holds for most of the states. Of course there had to be two that were so different I get cut of for one with any angle. Thanks again and Happy Holidays!

Lara 

[jcarlson]

You're very welcome! Yeah, the built-in sorting doesn't always work like you want. You could try converting the whole thing to a Data Expression and re-code the category values, but that may be more trouble than it's worth.