A Fast Multi-Scale Method for Drawing Large Graphs

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 that are substantially larger than those we have encountered in prior work. For example, the paper contains a drawing of a graph with over 15,000 vertices. Also we achieve "nice" drawings of 1000 vertex graphs in about 1 second. The proposed algorithm embodies a new multi-scale scheme for drawing graphs, which was motivated by the earlier multi-scale algorithm of Hadany and Harel []. In principle, it could 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).