A heuristic for minimum-width graph layering with consideration of dummy nodes

Abstract

We propose a new graph layering heuristic which can be used for hierarchical graph drawing with the minimum width. Our heuristic takes into account the space occupied by both the nodes and the edges of a directed acyclic graph and constructs layerings which are narrower that layerings constructed by the known layering algorithms. It can be used as a part of the Sugiyama method for hierarchical graph drawing. We present an extensive parameter study which we performed for designing our heuristic as well as for comparing it to other layering algorithms. © Springer-Verlag 2004.