CODEWITHSUNDEEP
graphvisualizationdirected-acyclic-graphs
Jonathon Ashworth
Jonathon Ashworth

Reputation: 1114

How do I visualise an arbitrary directed acyclic graph?

I'm looking for an algorithm to automatically visualise a large DAG. It needs to scale well to hundreds or even thousands of nodes and connections (without turning unreadable). Connections should avoid crossing over each other where possible, and should especially avoid crossing over nodes that they aren't connected to.

Is there any standard algorithm I can adapt for this purpose?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1023

Answers (2)

jmdeldin
jmdeldin

Reputation: 5404

You could check out the scalable force-directed placement algorithm. Graphviz implements this, so if you'd like to preview it before implementing, create a Graphviz file and run sfdp my_dag.gv (or fdp which might be easier to implement).

If that doesn't work for you, you might want something like Circos or Hive Plots. Hive Plots work really well for thousands of nodes for both directed and undirected graphs. The algorithm is described at a high level on the homepage, but there's an accompanying journal article too.

Upvotes: 1

Aurélien B
Aurélien B

Reputation: 4640

You can try Gephi a graph viz software. You can feed it with different file type (.gexf, .gdf).

As this is a open source software, you can look inside spatialization algorithms.

url: http://gephi.org/

Upvotes: 0

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