Modern visual analytics tools provide mechanism for users to gain unknown knowledge through effective visual interactions for user to quickly understand the progress of algorithms and adjust the input parameters on intermediate visualizations that towards the production of most satisfied outcome. This requires the quick production of a sequence of graph visualizations. However, the traditional force-directed graph drawing algorithms are very slow to reach an equilibrium configuration of forces. They usually spend tens of seconds producing the layout of a graph converge. Thus, they do not satisfy the requirement of rapid drawing of graphs. This paper proposes a fast convergence method for drawing force-directed graphs. We essentially precalculate the geometrical position of all vertices before applying a force-directed layout algorithm to reach the energy minimization of the graph layout. The experimental results have shown that this approach could not only reduce the convergence time but also the number of edge crossings that approves the quality of layout significantly.

Item Type:	Refereed Conference Paper
Keywords:	graph visualization; graph drawing; data analytics; information visualization; forcedirected.
Research Division:	Information and Computing Sciences
Research Group:	Information Systems
Research Field:	Computer-Human Interaction
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding Knowledge in the Information and Computing Sciences
UTAS Author:	Huang, W (Dr Tony Huang)
ID Code:	90148
Year Published:	2012
Deposited By:	Information and Communication Technology
Deposited On:	2014-03-27
Last Modified:	2018-03-16
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