Spherical Layout for 3D Graph Visualization

Abstract

The goal of this work was centered in the graph visualization. The hope is that the extra dimension would give, literally, more space, and that this would ease the problem of displaying large structures. In spite of their apparent simplicity, the displaying of graphs in 3D can also introduce new problems that can be overcome with the appropriate interactions. So, we have developed a new visualization technique for 3D graph visualization; this includes the design of a new graph layout that we called spherical layout and the set of interactions that can be applied on this representation. This technique allows representing structures to different levels of detail and also can be used as a visualization technique that allows more information to be visualized; based on the universe metaphor, the visualization technique was extended keeping all the time the consistency between the visual representation and the metaphor.