Lombardi Drawings of Graphs

We introduce the notion of Lombardi graph drawings, named after the American abstract artist Mark Lombardi. In these drawings, edges are represented as circular arcs rather than as line segments or polylines, and the vertices have perfect angular resolution: the edges are equally spaced around each vertex. We describe algorithms for finding Lombardi drawings of regular graphs, graphs of bounded degeneracy, and certain families of planar graphs.Comment: Expanded version of paper appearing in the 18th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD 2010). 13 pages, 7 figure

Planar and Poly-Arc Lombardi Drawings

In Lombardi drawings of graphs, edges are represented as circular arcs, and the edges incident on vertices have perfect angular resolution. However, not every graph has a Lombardi drawing, and not every planar graph has a planar Lombardi drawing. We introduce k-Lombardi drawings, in which each edge may be drawn with k circular arcs, noting that every graph has a smooth 2-Lombardi drawing. We show that every planar graph has a smooth planar 3-Lombardi drawing and further investigate topics connecting planarity and Lombardi drawings.Comment: Expanded version of paper appearing in the 19th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD 2011). 16 pages, 8 figure

Achieving Good Angular Resolution in 3D Arc Diagrams

We study a three-dimensional analogue to the well-known graph visualization approach known as arc diagrams. We provide several algorithms that achieve good angular resolution for 3D arc diagrams, even for cases when the arcs must project to a given 2D straight-line drawing of the input graph. Our methods make use of various graph coloring algorithms, including an algorithm for a new coloring problem, which we call localized edge coloring.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; to appear at the 21st International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD 2013

Maximizing the Total Resolution of Graphs

A major factor affecting the readability of a graph drawing is its resolution. In the graph drawing literature, the resolution of a drawing is either measured based on the angles formed by consecutive edges incident to a common node (angular resolution) or by the angles formed at edge crossings (crossing resolution). In this paper, we evaluate both by introducing the notion of "total resolution", that is, the minimum of the angular and crossing resolution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time where the problem of maximizing the total resolution of a drawing is studied. The main contribution of the paper consists of drawings of asymptotically optimal total resolution for complete graphs (circular drawings) and for complete bipartite graphs (2-layered drawings). In addition, we present and experimentally evaluate a force-directed based algorithm that constructs drawings of large total resolution

A Universal Slope Set for 1-Bend Planar Drawings

We describe a set of Delta-1 slopes that are universal for 1-bend planar drawings of planar graphs of maximum degree Delta>=4; this establishes a new upper bound of Delta-1 on the 1-bend planar slope number. By universal we mean that every planar graph of degree Delta has a planar drawing with at most one bend per edge and such that the slopes of the segments forming the edges belong to the given set of slopes. This improves over previous results in two ways: Firstly, the best previously known upper bound for the 1-bend planar slope number was 3/2(Delta-1) (the known lower bound being 3/4(Delta-1)); secondly, all the known algorithms to construct 1-bend planar drawings with O(Delta) slopes use a different set of slopes for each graph and can have bad angular resolution, while our algorithm uses a universal set of slopes, which also guarantees that the minimum angle between any two edges incident to a vertex is pi/(Delta-1)

Drawing Trees with Perfect Angular Resolution and Polynomial Area

We study methods for drawing trees with perfect angular resolution, i.e., with angles at each node v equal to 2{\pi}/d(v). We show: 1. Any unordered tree has a crossing-free straight-line drawing with perfect angular resolution and polynomial area. 2. There are ordered trees that require exponential area for any crossing-free straight-line drawing having perfect angular resolution. 3. Any ordered tree has a crossing-free Lombardi-style drawing (where each edge is represented by a circular arc) with perfect angular resolution and polynomial area. Thus, our results explore what is achievable with straight-line drawings and what more is achievable with Lombardi-style drawings, with respect to drawings of trees with perfect angular resolution.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figure