Abstract We present a novel approach to the aesthetic drawing of undirected graphs. The method has two phases: first embed the graph in a very high dimension and then project it into the 2-D plane using principal components analysis. Running time is linear in the graph size, and experiments we have carried out show the ability of the method to draw graphs of 10⁵ nodes in few seconds. The new method appears to have several advantages over classical methods, including a significantly better running time, a useful inherent capability to exhibit the graph in various dimensions, and an effective means for interactive exploration of large graphs.