Rose Diagram Maker
Turn a column of azimuths into a publication-ready rose diagram. Choose your bin width, mirror the data for non-directional measurements, and export vector SVG.
What a rose diagram shows
A rose diagram is a histogram bent into a circle. Azimuths are grouped into bins — 10° or 15° is typical — and each bin is drawn as a petal whose length reflects how many measurements fell into it. It is the natural way to display directional data, because a linear histogram breaks at 360°/0° and splits a north-trending population in half.
The single most important setting is whether your data are bidirectional or unidirectional. Joints, veins, lineaments, fold axial traces and fracture traces have no sense of direction: a 040° joint is the same joint as a 220° one, so the diagram should be symmetric and the data mirrored. Paleocurrent indicators, glacial striae with a known ice-flow sense, and wind measurements *do* have a direction, and mirroring them would be wrong.
Data
Paste straight from Excel or Google Sheets — include the header row and the columns are matched by name, in any order.
| # | Azimuth° | Set(opt) | Label(opt) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 3 | ||||
| 4 |
0 rows of data
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Enter data on the left to plot it
SVG is vector — resize it in Illustrator or Inkscape without losing quality. PNG 4× is roughly 600 dpi at figure width.
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The petal-length trap
Because the area of a petal grows with the square of its radius, plotting raw counts as radius makes a large bin look far more dominant than it is. Scaling petal radius by the square root of the count makes petal area proportional to frequency, which is what the eye actually reads. If you are comparing two roses in the same figure, make sure they share a scale as well.
Who uses one
Structural geologists summarising joint and fracture sets. Sedimentologists reconstructing paleocurrent directions from cross-bedding, flute casts and imbrication. Geomorphologists and remote-sensing analysts characterising lineament trends. Coastal and wind engineers, and planetary scientists mapping graben orientations.
Common questions
- What bin width should I choose?
- Ten degrees is the usual default. With fewer than about 30 measurements go wider (15–20°) so the diagram is not dominated by noise; with several hundred you can go to 5° and still see real structure.
- Can I weight measurements?
- Yes — supply an optional weight column, for example fracture trace length or aperture, and petals are scaled by the summed weight rather than the raw count.
- Can I collect azimuths in the field and finish the diagram in the office?
- Yes. Enter the azimuths on a phone at the outcrop, then use “Send to device” to turn the table into a QR code and a link. Scan it from the desktop and the same column of readings opens there, with your bin width and mirroring settings already applied. The data rides in the fragment of the URL — the part after the “#” — which is never sent to a server, so a lineament survey over a client’s licence area does not pass through anybody else’s system on the way to your report. Creating the link needs Pro; opening one does not.