Creating a Graph with Too Many Vertices

0
votes

I am going to build a graph in my java project and I am using Jung library. My problem is that I have too many vertices and with CircleLayout or FRlayout I can't have a good visualization of the graph; I mean the vertices are very very close to each other. Can anybody help me what I can do in such a situation?

I want to have a nice visualization of the graph in which the vertices are far enough to be able to see which vertex is connected to which vertex.

Here you see the current visualization of graph vertices. enter image description here

1
javagraphvisualizationjung
Just curious: How many vertices are this? And what does it look like when you use FRLayout? Do the edges have different lengths? In general, the problem of overplotting for node-link-based graph visualizations is omnipresent and one of the main driving forces for all the research that is still going on in this area, so it might (in the worst case) be that there is no easier answer than "Read many research papers and implement one of the newest layout methods that have been proven to be 'good' for your particular graph topology" ... - Marco13
@Marco13 Thank you for your answer. What I got by FRLayout was something similar. The number of vertices is around 600. Since it is just the first step of my work and not my main work, I don't want to spend much time on finding a way to visualize it. I just want to make it have a less complicated view. - user1419243
OK, then JUNG should be the right approach, because it usually delivers "good" results with little effort. In this case, one important question might be what the topology of the graph is. Does the topology resemble a circle? That is, does each vertex have exactly two neighbors? Regardless of that, you should try the other layouts as well. Particularly the SpringLayout2. It has quite some tuning parameters, but usually causes a "nice" distribution of the vertices for a wide variety of graph topologies. - Marco13
@Marco13 Thank you very much. I tried this layout and it visualizes the graph much much better now. - user1419243

1 Answers

1
votes

(Originally, this was a comment, but to give the question a chance to bre removed from the "unanswered" queue: )

One important question might be what the topology of the graph is. Does the topology resemble a circle? That is, does each vertex have exactly two neighbors?

Regardless of that, you should try the other layouts as well. Particularly the SpringLayout2. It has quite some tuning parameters, but usually causes a "nice" distribution of the vertices for a wide variety of graph topologies