Efficient, Proximity-Preserving Node Overlap Removal

When drawing graphs whose nodes contain text or graphics, the nontrivial node sizes must be taken into account, either as part of the initial layout or as a post-processing step. The core problem in avoiding or removing overlaps is to retain the structural information inherent in a layout while minimizing the additional area required. This paper presents a new node overlap removal algorithm that does well at retaining a graph’s shape while using little additional area and time. As part of the analysis, we consider and evaluate two measures of dissimilarity for two layouts of the same graph.