NodeXL updated starting with version 1.05 with features that make it fairly easy to create basic “Venn Diagrams”.  A Venn diagram is a familiar way to illustrate the overlap (or lack thereof) of two or more “sets” of things.

There are some very amusing Venn diagrams out there!  This one in particular made me laugh but I may be dating myself.

The Venn diagram feature is a special request from the Microsoft Biological Foundation group.

A Venn is related to but different from an Euler diagram.  An “n-Venn” diagram is a collection of closed curves (“circles”) on a plane where all the circles intersect. A “simple” Venn diagram has just two circles but complex diagrams can have more.  A 2 circle Venn diagram has 3 regions (A, B, A+B) and a 3 circle Venn diagram has 7 regions (A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, ABC).

A Survey of Venn Diagrams can be found at http://www.combinatorics.org/Surveys/ds5/VennEJC.html.

Our implementation is a bit of a hack, we basically let you define the X/Y location of 3 circles.  A richer Venn tool would make it easy to take set data and define these circles.  We may get that implemented in the coming months.