Abstract
We present a multi-scale layout algorithm for the aesthetic drawing of undirected graphs with straight-line edges. The algorithm is extremely fast, and is capable of drawing graphs of substantially larger size than any other algorithm we are aware of. For example, the algorithm achieves optimal drawings of 1000 vertex graphs in about 2 seconds. The paper contains graphs with over 6000 nodes. The proposed algorithm embodies a new multi-scale scheme for drawing graphs, which was motivated by the recently published multi-scale algorithm of Hadany and Harel [7]. It can significantly improve the speed of essentially any force-directed method (regardless of that method’s ability of drawing weighted graphs or the continuity of its cost-function).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Brandenburg, F.J., Himsolt, M., and Rohrer, C., “An Experimental Comparison of Force-Directed and Randomized Graph Drawing Algorithms”, Proceedings of Graph Drawing’ 95, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1027, pp. 76–87, Springer Verlag, 1995.
Di Battista, G., Eades, P., Tamassia, R. and Tollis, I.G., Algorithms for the Visualization of Graphs, Prentice-Hall, 1999.
Davidson, R., and Harel, D., “Drawing Graphs Nicely Using Simulated Annealing”, ACM Trans. on Graphics 15 (1996), 301–331.
Eades, P., “A Heuristic for Graph Drawing”, Congressus Numerantium 42 (1984), 149–160.
Fruchterman, T.M.G., and Reingold, E., “Graph Drawing by Force-Directed Placement”, Software-Practice and Experience 21 (1991), 1129–1164.
Gonzalez, T., “Clustering to Minimize the Maximum Inter-Cluster Distance”, Theoretical Computer Science 38 (1985), 293–306.
Hadany, R., and Harel, D., “A Multi-Scale Method for Drawing Graphs Nicely”, Discrete Applied Mathematics, in press, 2000. (Also, Proc. 25th Inter. Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG’ 99), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1665, pp. 262-277, Springer Verlag, 1999.)
Hochbaum, D. S. (ed.), Approximation Algorithms for NP-Hard Problems, PWS Publishing Company, 1996.
Hochbaum, D.S., and Shmoys, D. B, “A Unified Approach to Approximation Algorithms for Bottleneck Problems”, J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 33 (1986), 533–550.
Kamada, T., and Kawai, S., “An Algorithm for Drawing General Undirected Graphs”, Information Processing Letters 31 (1989), 7–15.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Harel, D., Koren, Y. (2001). A Fast Multi-scale Method for Drawing Large Graphs. In: Marks, J. (eds) Graph Drawing. GD 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1984. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44541-2_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44541-2_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41554-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44541-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive