Drawing Stressed Planar Graphs in Three Dimensions

There is much current interest among researchers to find algorithms that will draw graphs in three dimensions. It is well known that every 3-connected planar graph can be represented as a strictly convex polyhedron. However, no practical algorithms exist to draw a general 3-connected planar graph as a convex polyhedron. In this paper we review the concept of a stressed graph and how it relates to convex polyhedra; we present a practical algorithm that uses stressed graphs to draw 3-connected planar graphs as strictly convex polyhedra; and show some examples.