GLDraw: A Platform for Graph Visualization

Graph visualization refers to the representation of a graph, available as data, in an understandable human manner, such as a diagram of an abstract graph. These diagrams aimed at providing better readability to the user. Finding the best drawing strategy for a visually pleasing diagram is really challenging as it depends upon the quality and allowed time expected in the output. Almost all the existing graph drawing algorithms have a linear time-variant, but their practical implementation time differs widely. Existing platforms provide only a small number of algorithmic choices, so there is a difficulty in comparing all the algorithms for a particular task. In this paper, we describe GLDraw, our graph visualization tool. GLDraw (Graph Layout Drawing) provides the user, a choice of different graph drawing layouts and heuristics to improve the quality of the drawing. We have used GLDraw to find out the best strategy to draw planar graphs and perform a comparative study based on the time taken to produce the output for different graph drawing algorithms (or layouts). GLDraw also supports simultaneous drawing of shared graphs as well as multiple drawings of different graphs. The drawing techniques provided are hierarchical, orthogonal, grid, and force-directed methods. We have found that for different types of graphs, choosing an appropriate layout plays a vital role in achieving a quality drawing, for example, in case of tree graphs planarization grid and for general planar graphs force-directed would be the better option.