Genetic Graph Drawing

Abstract

The drawing of graphs is widely recognized as a very important task in diverse elds of research and development. Examples include VLSI Design and plant layout. Also, many CASE methodologies and interactive dataintensive applications should perform graph drawing and should manage a large amount of constraints including semantic ones. On the other hand, when the information that must be visualized is changing constantly, is necessary to develop automatic methods to partially (or totally) redraw the diagrams. We want to obtain drawings that are optimal in the sense of readability. However, is di cult to create a general-purpose graph drawer and is also computationally expensive. Genetic algorithms (GAs) have recently received a growing interest and have been applied in many design problems. In this paper we describe why the GAs-based approach is a good alternative to obtain a general exible tool for Graph Drawing Problems, dealing also with semantic aesthetics. Free Form Deformation (FFD) has been used in structural design problems in combination with GAs. We also present an approach to automatic graph drawing based on GAs and FFD, for improving of a given layout by exploring its neighborhood. The search space is reduced and the readability of the drawings is improved. Also the Mental Map is almost preserved. Transactions on Information and Communications Technologies vol 20, © 1998 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517