We introduce a new method to optimize the required area, minimum angle and number of bends of planar drawings of graphs on a grid. The main tool is a new type of ordering on the vertices and faces of triconnected planar graphs. Using this method linear time and space algorithms can be designed for many graph drawing problems. -- Every triconnected planar graph G can be drawn convexly with straight lines on an (2n \Gamma 4) \Theta (n \Gamma 2) grid, where n is the number of vertices. -- Every triconnected planar graph with maximum degree four can be drawn orthogonally on an n \Theta n grid with at most d 3n 2 e + 4, and if n ? 6 then every edge has at most two bends. -- Every 3-planar graph G can be drawn with at most b n 2 c + 1 bends on an b n 2 c \Theta b n 2 c grid. -- Every triconnected planar graph G can be drawn planar on an (2n \Gamma 6) \Theta (3n \Gamma 9) grid with minimum angle larger than 2 d radians and at most 5n \Gamma 15 bends, with d the maximum d...

We consider the problem of deciding whether a polygonal knot in 3-dimensional Euclidean space is unknotted, capable of being continuously deformed without self-intersection so that it lies in a plane. We show that this problem, unknotting problem is in NP. We also consider the problem, unknotting problem of determining whether two or more such polygons can be split, or continuously deformed without self-intersection so that they occupy both sides of a plane without intersecting it. We show that it also is in NP. Finally, we show that the problem of determining the genus of a polygonal knot (a generalization of the problem of determining whether it is unknotted) is in PSPACE. We also give exponential worstcase running time bounds for deterministic algorithms to solve each of these problems. These algorithms are based on the use of normal surfaces and decision procedures due to W. Haken, with recent extensions by W. Jaco and J. L. Tollefson.

We present a linear-time algorithm that, given an n-vertex planar graph G, finds an embedding of G into a (2n \Gamma 4) \Theta (n \Gamma 2) grid such that the edges of G are straight-line segments. 1 Introduction We consider the problem of embedding the vertices of a planar graph into a small grid in the plane in such a way that the edges are straight, non-intersecting line segments. The existence of such straight-line embeddings for planar graphs was independently discovered by F'ary [Fa48], Stein [St51], and Wagner [Wa36]; this result also follows from Steinitz's theorem on convex polytopes in three dimensions [SR34]. The first algorithms for constructing straightline embeddings [Tu63, CYN84, CON85] required high-precision arithmetic, and the resulting drawings were not very aesthetic, since they tend to produce uneven distributions of vertices over the drawing area. Rosenstiehl and Tarjan [RT86] noticed that it would be convenient to be able to map veritices of a planar graph into a...

Given a set S of n points in the plane, we give an O(n log n)-time algorithm that constructs a plane t-spanner for S, for t 10:02, such that the degree of each point of S is bounded from above by 27, and the total edge length is proportional to the weight of a minimum spanning tree of S. These constants are all worst case constants that are artifacts of our proofs. In practice, we believe them to be much smaller. Previously, no algorithms were known for constructing plane t-spanners of bounded degree.

There is a positive constant c1 such that for any diagram D representing the unknot, there is a sequence of at most 2 c 1 n Reidemeister moves that will convert it to a trivial knot diagram, where n is the number of crossings in D. A similar result holds for elementary moves on a polygonal knot K embedded in the 1-skeleton of the interior of a compact triangulated orientable PL 3-manifold M . There is a positive constant c2 such that for each t 1, if M consists of t tetrahedra, and K is unknotted, then there is a sequence of at most 2 c 2 t elementary moves in M which transforms K to a triangle contained inside one tetrahedron of M . We obtain explicit values for c1 and c2 . Keywords: knot theory, knot diagram, Reidemeister move, normal surfaces, computational complexity This paper grew out of work begun while the authors were visiting the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley in 1996/7. Research at MSRI is supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9022140. The first au...

The canonical ordering for triconnected planar graphs is a powerful method for designing graph algorithms. This paper introduces the orderly pair of connected planar graphs, which extends the concept of canonical ordering to planar graphs not required to be triconnected. Let G be a connected planar graph. We give a linear-time algorithm that obtains an orderly pair (H

Given a plane graph G, we wish to draw it in the plane in such a way that the vertices of G are represented as grid points, and the edges are represented as straight-line segments between their endpoints. An additional objective is to minimize the size of the resulting grid. It is known that each plane graph can be drawn in such a way in a (n \Gamma 2) \Theta (n \Gamma 2) grid (for n 3), and that no grid smaller than (2n=3 \Gamma 1) \Theta (2n=3 \Gamma 1) can be used for this purpose, if n is a multiple of 3. In fact, for all n 3, each dimension of the resulting grid needs to be at least b2(n \Gamma 1)=3c, even if the other one is allowed to be unbounded. In this paper we show that this bound is tight by presenting a grid drawing algorithm that produces drawings of width b2(n \Gamma 1)=3c. The height of the produced drawings is bounded by 4b2(n \Gamma 1)=3c \Gamma 1. Our algorithm runs in linear time and is easy to implement. 1 Introduction The problem of automatic graph drawing ha...

Given a finite, undirected, simple graph G, we are concerned with operations on G that transform it into a planar graph. We give a survey of results about such operations and related graph parameters. While there are many algorithmic results about planarization through edge deletion, the results about vertex splitting, thickness, and crossing number are mostly of a structural nature. We also include a brief section on vertex deletion. We do not consider parallel algorithms, nor do we deal with on-line algorithms.

Pointed pseudo-triangulations are planar minimally rigid graphs embedded in the plane with pointed vertices (incident to an angle larger than π). In this paper we prove that the opposite statement is also true, namely that planar minimally rigid graphs always admit pointed embeddings, even under certain natural topological and combinatorial constraints. The proofs yield efficient embedding algorithms. They also provide—to the best of our knowledge—the first algorithmically effective result on graph embeddings with oriented matroid constraints other than convexity of faces.

vi Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii List of Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv I Orthogonal Graph Drawing 1 1