Graph Edge Bundling by Medial Axes

We present a new method for bundling edges of general graphs, based on 2D medial axes of edge sets which are similar in terms of position. We combine edge clustering, distance fields, and 2D medial axes to progressively bundle general graphs by attract-ing edges towards the centerlines of level sets of their distance fields. Our method allows for an efficient GPU implementation. We illustrate our method on several large real-world graphs

Comparison of Node-Link and Hierarchical Edge Bundling Layouts: A User Study

Visually investigating large network-like structures is a challenging task. Several approaches have been proposed in the past: node-link diagrams, adjacency matrices, and, more recently, hierarchical edge bundles. We present a recent experiment that compares the effectiveness of the classical node-link diagrams with the more recent hierarchical bundled edges. The users involved several computer science practitioners, the data ranged from graphs of several hundreds to several tens of hundreds of nodes, the tasks involved answering a number of structural overview as well as detailed questions involved system dependencies