5 research outputs found
Convexity-Increasing Morphs of Planar Graphs
We study the problem of convexifying drawings of planar graphs. Given any
planar straight-line drawing of an internally 3-connected graph, we show how to
morph the drawing to one with strictly convex faces while maintaining planarity
at all times. Our morph is convexity-increasing, meaning that once an angle is
convex, it remains convex. We give an efficient algorithm that constructs such
a morph as a composition of a linear number of steps where each step either
moves vertices along horizontal lines or moves vertices along vertical lines.
Moreover, we show that a linear number of steps is worst-case optimal.
To obtain our result, we use a well-known technique by Hong and Nagamochi for
finding redrawings with convex faces while preserving y-coordinates. Using a
variant of Tutte's graph drawing algorithm, we obtain a new proof of Hong and
Nagamochi's result which comes with a better running time. This is of
independent interest, as Hong and Nagamochi's technique serves as a building
block in existing morphing algorithms.Comment: Preliminary version in Proc. WG 201