Many automatic graph layout algorithms can cause shaped vertices and edge labels (which have a size when drawn on the screen) to overlap in the resulting visualisation. Overlaps can hide information that users expect to see in cases where the graph is small. We perform two experiments on a large real-world set of small (10-110 vertex) graphs to compare how different combinations of forces in Ea...

A potential field approach, coupled with force-directed methods, is proposed in this paper for drawing graphs with nonuniform nodes in 2-D and 3-D. In our framework, nonuniform nodes are uniformly or nonuniformly charged, while edges are modelled by springs. Using certain techniques developed in the field of potential-based path planning, we are able to find analytically tractable procedures fo...