High-Level Steps for Designing Graphs

The ODS Graphics Designer provides many options for designing graphs, and your approach can vary from what is described here. Generally, a typical design process might consist of the following steps:

Create a graph in one of the following ways:

From the Graph Gallery	Create the graph by opening a predefined graph from the gallery. Placeholder data is assigned to the plot or plots in the graph. Assign data that is appropriate for your graph. For instructions, see Create a Graph from the Graph Gallery.
From a blank graph	Create a blank graph. Add a plot to the graph. Assign data to the plot. For instructions, see Create a Graph from a Blank Graph Window.

Add additional plots to the graph as desired. For instructions, see Add a Plot to a Graph.

Exception: You cannot add plots to matrix graphs that you create from the Matrix tab of the Graph Gallery.
To design a multi-cell graph, add one or more rows, columns, or both to the graph. Then add one or more plots to the new cells. For instructions, see Adding Rows and Columns to a Graph.

Exception: You cannot add rows and columns to graphs that you create from the Matrix tab or the Panels tab of the Graph Gallery.

Note: The designer also enables you to create classification panels, which are data-driven layouts that create a grid of cells based on one or more classification variables. For more information, see Creating Classification Panels.
Customize the graph. Here are some of the changes that you can make:
- Change the graph’s style, size, or background color. For more information, see Changing Graph Properties.
- Change the visual attributes of a plot, such as marker color, symbol, line color, and thickness. For more information, see Changing Plot Properties.
- Change axis properties, including grid lines. For more information, see Changing Axis Properties.
- Add titles and footnotes to the graph. For more information, see Working with Titles and Footnotes.
- Add or customize legends, which can reside inside or outside of a cell. For more information, see Working with Legends.
- Add headers to a cell. For more information, see Working with Cell Headers.
- Add text to a cell. For more information, see Working with Text Entries.
Save the graph. For instructions, see Save a Graph to a File.

You can also create graphs that can be reused with different variables in the same or in a different data set. For more information, see Using Shared Variables in Graphs. (This feature is new in the third maintenance release for SAS 9.2.)