Fast Interactive force-directed graph layout engine

Question

I need a framework/library which will enable me to develop a realtime interactive graph simulation. The user must be able to dynamically add nodes and edges. I have found Prefuse and its force directed layout and I really like it. But it is not fully thread-safe, and doesn't perform all that well -- maybe it has problems with big graphs?

Are there some decent alternatives? I know about Flare, but I have no desire to learn ActionScript and would rather stick with c++/java/c#.

How big of graph are you talking about? Prefuse actually scales fairly well. — Jay Askren, Apr 13 '11 at 00:10
I've created graph with approx. 1500 nodes and it became really slow. — l245c4l, Apr 15 '11 at 20:19
How do you expect from your users to create a graph of size 1500 with mouse and keyboard? — Saeed Amiri, Jul 05 '12 at 21:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 14 '12 at 10:33

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yFiles is a good commercial library (Java, C#, ActionScript, Javascript versions available) for interactive graph visualization, that supports wide range of layouts, and has no problems showing very big graphs. You can test its capabilities quickly by trying yEd, which is based on yFiles.

edited Jul 14 '12 at 10:33

Sebastian

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answered Jul 10 '12 at 21:34

Ville Laitila

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 23 '16 at 19:54

The question is a bit old but still let me introduce another commercial option for C#. GraphX for .NET PRO is capable of rendering thousands of vertices and edges simultaneously and supports variety of force-directed layouts. There is also free open-source version which is less performant but supports easy styling features.

Fast Interactive force-directed graph layout engine

2 Answers2