Making a US Map (in Hexagons)

To make a US State map that has the states represented by a hexagon shape, there are three things you need:

  • The Hexagon shape (or another similar shape)
  • The data (hexmap) to align the shapes to the US hex tiled map (Find the file from this blog)
  • A field in your original data with either the full state name or abbreviation

After obtaining the files, you will first need to add a custom shape into your tableau shapes folder. Read more on how to add custom shapes to Tableau Desktop here. Add the hexagon shape through the instructions in the blog and reload your shapes palette.

Next join the hexmap data to the data you want to make the hex tiled map for. 

Now you are ready to make the hex tiled US map! Open a new sheet and drag column to column and rows to rows. 

Reverse the rows axis.

Change the marks type to a shape and select the hexagon we added to Tableau. Add abbreviation to the label and add the measure metric of your choice to color.

Now you have your hex tiled map and the only steps remaining is to clean up the map. Resize the shape as needed and hide the axis!

You can see an example of the hex tiled map from my dashboard

Photo by Daniel Gonzalez on Unsplash

Author:
Calvin Gao
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