About SAS ODS Statistical Graphics :: SAS(R) Studio 3.3: User's Guide

About SAS ODS Statistical Graphics

SAS ODS Statistical Graphics, more commonly referred to as SAS ODS Graphics, is an extension of the SAS Output Delivery System (ODS). ODS manages all output that is created by procedures and enables you to display the output in a variety of forms, including HTML and PDF.

Many SAS analytical procedures use ODS Graphics functionality to produce graphs as automatically as these procedures produce tables. ODS Graphics uses the Graph Template Language (GTL) syntax, which provides the power and flexibility to create many complex graphs. The GTL is a comprehensive language for defining statistical graphics.

In SAS Studio, you can use the ODS Graphics Designer to define these statistical graphics without knowing the GTL. After a graph definition is created, you can use that graph definition to create an ODS statistical graph in SAS Studio.

SAS ODS Graphics Designer

What Is the SAS ODS Graphics Designer?

The SAS ODS Graphics Designer is an interactive graphical application that you can use to create and design custom graphs. The designer creates graphs that are based on the Graph Template Language (GTL), which is the same language that is used by SAS analytical procedures and SAS ODS Graphics procedures. The ODS Graphics Designer provides a graphical user interface so that you can design graphs easily without knowing the details of templates and the GTL.

Using point-and-click interaction, you can create simple or complex graphical views of data for analysis. The ODS Graphics Designer enables you to design sophisticated graphs by using a wide array of plot types. You can design multi-cell graphs, classification panels, and scatter plot matrices. Your graphs can have titles, footnotes, legends, and other graphics elements. You can save the results as an image for inclusion in a report or as an ODS Graphics Designer file (SGD) that you can later edit.

For more information, see SAS ODS Graphics Designer: User's Guide, which is available from support.sas.com.

How to Install the SAS ODS Graphics Designer

If you have SAS Foundation installed on your machine, the SAS ODS Graphics Designer is already available. For example, if you are using the single-user edition of SAS Studio, the SAS ODS Graphics Designer is already installed because you are running SAS Foundation and SAS Studio on the same machine.

Note: Only the Windows version of the SAS ODS Graphics Designer is supported when you are running SAS Studio. The SAS ODS Graphics Designer must be installed on the same machine as the browser you are using to access SAS Studio. (SAS Studio might be installed on a different machine.) If multiple users are accessing SAS Studio and these users are on different machines, SAS ODS Graphics Designer must be installed on each user’s machine.

To install the SAS ODS Graphics Designer:

Click . Select ToolsInstall ODS Graphics Designer. The downloads and hot fixes page for Base SAS Software on support.sas.com opens.
Under the SAS 9.4M2 heading, click SAS ODS Graphics Designer.
From the list of download pages, click Request download for your Windows operating environment and follow the subsequent installation steps.

Open the SAS ODS Graphics Designer

After the SAS ODS Graphics Designer is installed, you can open it by using a menu option in SAS Studio. To open SAS ODS Graphics Designer, click More application options button

and select Tools. Then select ODS Graphics Designer.

SAS ODS Graphics Editor

What Is the SAS ODS Graphics Editor?

The ODS Graphics Editor enables you to edit the various elements in the output graph while keeping the underlying data unchanged. In addition, you can annotate a graph by inserting text, lines, arrows, images, and other items in a layer above the graph. You can save the results of your customization as an ODS Graphics Editor (SGE) file and make incremental changes to the file. You can also save the results as a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image file for inclusion in other documents.

For more information about the SAS ODS Graphics Editor, see SAS ODS Graphics Editor: User's Guide, which is available from support.sas.com.

How to Install the SAS ODS Graphics Editor

When you install the SAS ODS Graphics Editor, SAS Studio automatically creates the ~/Projects/ODSEditorFiles directory.

Note: If you are running the single-user edition of SAS Studio, then the SAS ODS Graphics Editor is already installed.

To install the SAS ODS Graphics Editor:

Click . Select ToolsInstall ODS Graphics Editor. The downloads and hot fixes page for Base SAS Software on support.sas.com opens.
For your release of SAS, click ODS Graphics Editor. (For example, if you are running on SAS 9.4, select ODS Graphics Editor under the SAS 9.4 heading.)
From the list of download pages, click Request download for your Windows operating environment and follow the subsequent installation steps.

How to Edit Your Graphics Output

Include this statement in your SAS code so that you can edit your graphics output:
```
ods listing sge=on gpath="{home}/Projects/ODSEditorFiles";
```
When you run this program, the graphical output is saved as an SGE file in your ~/Projects/ODSEditorFiles directory.
In the Folders section of the navigation pane, expand the ODSEditorFiles folder.
Double-click the filename to open the graph in the SAS ODS Graphics Editor.

For example, here is the SGPanel1.sge file in the SAS ODS Graphics Editor.

Example of an SGE File in the SAS ODS Graphics Editor

Note: The default list of files in your ODSEditorFiles folder is created by the code snippets in the Snippets section. For more information, see Working with Code Snippets.