Abstract: Graph visualization technology is an important part of visualization research. The drawing of large graphs has been the focus of graph visualization technology in recent years. This paper proposes a fast multilevel algorithm for solving large graph drawing problems. The algorithm uses a multilevel method as the framework of the algorithm. The present study uses a FR force-directed algorithm variant combined with centroid algorithm and quad-tree space decomposition method to refine the single-level layouts. Also, energy-model and constraint-normalization are used. Experiments show that the algorithm has high performance and good layout effect. The algorithm is of high efficiency, and under a single-core CPU, it can effectively draw a graph of 10,000 vertices in about 5 seconds. Through comparison with several classical algorithms, the effectiveness and practicability of the algorithm was proved. In addition, the algorithm is easy to implement and can be easily generalized to other layout algorithms to speed up its operations.

Key words: fast multilevel algorithm, drawing large graphs, graph visualization, graph layout algorithm