DRAWING GRAPHS NICELY USING SIMULATED ANNEALING

The paradigm of simulated annealing is applied to the problem of drawi ng graphs ''nicely.'' Our algorithm deals with general undirected grap hs with straight-line edges, and employs several simple criteria for t he aesthetic quality of the result. The algorithm is flexible, in that the relative weights of the criteria can be changed. For graphs of mo dest size it produces good results, competitive with those produced by other methods, notably, the ''spring method'' and its variants.