Drawing Planar Graphs Symmetrically, III: Oneconnected Planar Graphs

Abstract

Symmetry is one of the most important aesthetic criteria in graph drawing because it reveals structure in the graph. This paper discusses symmetric drawings of oneconnected planar graphs. More specifically, we discuss planar (geometric) automorphisms, that is, automorphisms of a graph G that can be represented as symmetries of a planar drawing of G. Finding planar automorphisms is the first and most difficult step in constructing planar symmetric drawings of graphs. The problem of determining whether a given graph has a nontrivial geometric automorphism is NP-complete for general graphs. The two previous papers in this series have discussed the problem of drawing planar graphs with a maximum number of symmetries, for the restricted cases where the graph is triconnected and biconnected. This paper extends the previous results to cover planar graphs that are oneconnected. We present a linear time algorithm for drawing oneconnected planar graphs with a maximum number of symmetries.