Abstract

Aesthetics matter. Especially when it comes to graph drawings and visualizing complex information, a well drawn graph which adheres to aesthetic criteria improves readability and reduces mistakes and errors of the users that work with them. The difficulty however, lies in the creation of such graphs. In this thesis, we investigate the problem of automatically drawing aesthetic edges of complex graphs in real-time. We propose an edge drawing algorithm, which utilizes a 2-step process. The first step involves a path finding search based on Astar. By adjusting edge weights based on aesthetic criteria, we manipulate the path finding algorithm to find the most aesthetic path, instead of the shortest one. The second step consists of a post-processing procedure, which analyses the paths for its most important points. Then, using a force-directed relaxation technique, the overall shape of the path is improved before being finalized via Bezier-curves to smooth out the final edge. Previous work in similar fields such as Metro Map Drawing does not aim for real-time suitability or advanced graph features such as hierarchical nodes. The results show, that our algorithm is capable of solving the automatic and aesthetic edge drawing problem. It is capable of working with hierarchical nodes and can draw edges in real-time. We believe further improvements are possible, to optimize the performance even for large-scale problems and even more difficult advanced graph features like orthogonal nodes.

Results/Implementation/Project Description

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