Using graph parsing for automatic graph drawing

This paper presents a procedure for automatically drawing directed graphs. Our system, Clan-based Graph Drawing Tool (CG), uses a unique clan-based graph decomposition to determine intrinsic substructures (clans) in the graph and to produce a parse tree. The tree is given attributes that specify the node layout. CG then uses tree properties with the addition of “routing nodes” to route the edges. The objective of the system is to provide, automatically, an aesthetically pleasing visual layout for arbitrary directed graphs. The prototype has shown the strengths of this approach. The innovative strategy of clan-based graph decomposition is the first digraph drawing technique to analyze locality in the graph in two dimensions. The typical approach to drawing digraphs uses a single dimension, level, to arrange the nodes