How to Create Nested Circles (Onion Chart) in Tableau - My Way

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Initially, I decided to save this for when the theme will be Food because this is about the Onion Chart. However, I came across the above in one of the pages of The Truthful Art.

To know what an Onion chart is, you can read the Wikipedia article, Onion diagram. The tutorials that I have come across so far are Calculated Fields based. You can find them below:

  1. Vizzing Data
  2. Sons of Hierarchies
  3. Toan Hoang
  4. Viz Art Pandey
This tutorial uses the same technique with shapes here by Flerlage Twins.

Step 1: Download the Following Picture File
  • You can create your own using any software you are comfortable with.
  • It is basically a black circle in a transparent square where the circle is above the centerline of the transparent square.
Step 2: Insert the Circle into Shape
  • Read about inserting custom shapes into Tableau here if you are new to custom shapes.

Step 3: Build Your Chart

  • Create "0" for Columns and Rows.
  • Go to Shape and choose the file you have downloaded and saved in the above 2 steps.
  • Add the Category you want to differentiate into Colour.
  • Sort the Colour by the Field you are measuring by right-clicking on the pill for Colour and clicking on Sort.
  • Add the value or measure into Size and Label under Marks.

Step 4: Adjust Labels to Top Centre (shown below)


Step 5: Publish Your Onion Chart aka Nester Circles!