The Three-Phase Method: A Unified Approach to Orthogonal Graph Drawing

Abstract

In this paper, we study orthogonal graph drawings from a practical point of view. Most previously existing algorithms restricted the attention to graphs of maximum degree four. Here we study orthogonal drawing algorithms that work for any input graph, and discuss different models for such drawings. Then we introduce the three-phase method, a generic technique to create high-degree orthogonal drawings. This approach simplifies the description and implementation of orthogonal graph drawing, and can be applied to global as well as interactive and incremental settings.