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An Easy Way to Draw Spider Charts on Tableau – Part 2

Weave a web for spider charts with the help of Excel

At the end of last article "An Easy Way to Draw Spider Charts on Tableau – Part I", we left a question: how to provide a "web" background for our "spiders".

There are many tutorial articles and videos to teach people how to draw a radar background using calculations on Tableau, but I found them a little bit so complicated and hard to understand. I developed this easy way to get a background "web" from Excel and imported the "web" as a picture into Tableau. It’s very easy and straightforward to follow, so why not try to start "weaving your own web" from now?

In this article, I will still use the same university ranking example in Part I to help you understand the steps better.


>>> Step 1: Draw a "web" at Excel

Since we have 6 categories of [Qualities], we should weave a web consisting of 6 corners at Excel as well.

Open an Excel > Copy the 6 qualities and their scores and paste them at Excel > "Insert" > "Charts" > "Radar"

Delete all the titles, axes and labels on the chart > Delete all the score numbers

Copy the chart at Excel and paste it as a picture at Microsoft Word > Save the web picture to your local device


>>> Step 2: Import the "web" into Tableau

In the radar chart sheet, click "Map" > "Background Images" > "Add Image…"

Find your web picture in "Browse" > Select a proper level of "Washout"


>>> Step 3: Format the "web"

Find proper left and right borders for X-axis and Y-axis:

Left of X-axis = min of X-axis, Right of X-axis = max of X-axis

Bottom of Y-axis = min of Y-axis, Top of Y-axis = max of Y-axis

Remove all the headers, titles, axes and borders, you will get the radar chart with a web background!

To make it nicer and cuter, you can change the colors, fonts and shapes as you wish!


Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this article! I look forward to talking about Data Science and data visualizations with you! 🙋 ‍♂️


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