Explorer

Explorer is a column browser over your space’s cluster tree. Each column is one level of the hierarchy, each row is a cluster, and clicking a row selects that cluster’s points on the map. It is a navigation surface, nothing more: no search, no suggestions, no generated text.

Where to find it

View > Inspection > Explorer. It is the one Inspection panel that does not wait for point metadata, so it fills as soon as the cluster tree has loaded.

What it shows

Columns run left to right, from the root clusters to the deepest level of the tree. Every cluster in the space appears in the column matching its depth, so a column can be long; each column scrolls on its own.

Each row shows two things:

• The cluster’s display label.
• A badge with the number of that cluster’s points currently loaded in the map.

Rows you have clicked are tinted with the cluster’s own color, and that tint is inherited by the cluster’s descendants in the columns to the right, which is how you follow one branch across several columns. Tinted clusters also sort to the top of their column.

How clicking works

Explorer tracks the depth of your last click, and behaves differently depending on whether you stay at that depth:

• Click a cluster at the same depth as your last click. Its points are added to the current selection, and the cluster is added to the Selected Clusters list that the Inspector shows.
• Click a cluster that is already tinted. Its points are removed from the selection again.
• Click a cluster at a different depth. The selection is replaced by just that cluster’s points, and every previous tint is cleared.

The selection Explorer produces is marked as a tree selection, the same kind the Tree panel produces, so the map, Inspector, Quicksheet and Summarizer all follow along.

Two small behaviors are worth knowing. Each click clears the map’s current focus target, so the map does not zoom in on whatever you had focused before. And the column you clicked scrolls itself into the middle of the panel, which pulls the next level into view as you go deeper.

How to use it

1. Open Explorer and start in the leftmost column. Click a top-level cluster. Its points become the selection and the row takes the cluster’s color.
2. Move right. Click one of its children in the next column. Because that is a different depth, the selection is replaced by the child’s points only.
3. Widen at the same level. Keep clicking rows in the same column to union more clusters into the selection, and click a tinted row again to drop it.
4. Read the selection somewhere else. Open the Inspector for one point at a time, Quicksheet for the whole set as a table, or Summarizer for an analysis of the set.

Explorer beside a map. Each column is one depth of the cluster tree, each row shows a cluster label and its point count, and the highlighted rows are the clusters currently selected.

Limits

• Explorer does not read the selection, only writes it. Selecting points with the lasso or in another panel does not highlight anything here.
• The tints are panel state. Close the panel and they are gone, though the selection they produced stays on the map.
• There is no filter box, no rename, no merge, no way to create or edit clusters.
• The badge counts the points assigned to that cluster that are currently loaded; it is not a total for the whole subtree.

Read nextTreeThe same hierarchy as an expandable tree instead of columns.