I figured out the answer to questions 1 to 3 but I am still having problem with plotting which I have mentioned in question 4. Apart from this I am facing another issue. I had saved my vertex properties which are labels to the vertices in a variable vprop print(vprop[i]) will give the node name (in string) After the minimization of BlockState model, print_summary() gives the brief info on different layers like this: stateB.print_summary() # stateB is the minimized nested block state l: 0, N: 6525, B: 70 l: 1, N: 70, B: 14 l: 2, N: 14, B: 4 l: 3, N: 4, B: 1 l: 4, N: 1, B: 1 Then levels = stateB.get_levels() gives the blocks in each level and levels[i] is the individual layers When I type levels[i].get_blocks() it gives me Property map of key and corresponding block number in the current level 'i' Again, levels[i].get_blocks()[12] gives block number. But How to get the vertex property label/name in subsequent blocks similar to what I get from vprop ? -- Sent from: http://main-discussion-list-for-the-graph-tool-project.982480.n3.nabble.com/