Edge routing with ordered bundles

Abstract

We propose a new approach to edge bundling. At the first stage we route the edge paths so as to minimize a weighted sum of the total length of the paths together with their ink. As this problem is NP-hard, we provide an efficient heuristic that finds an approximate solution. The second stage then separates edges belonging to the same bundle. To achieve this, we provide a new and efficient algorithm that solves a variant of the metro-line crossing minimization problem. The method creates aesthetically pleasing edge routes that give an overview of the global graph structure, while still drawing each edge separately, without intersecting graph nodes, and with few crossings. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.