Organic is a multi-purpose layout style for undirected graphs. It produces clear representations of complex networks and is especially fit for application areas such as
The Organic Layouter is based on the force directed layout paradigm. When laying out a graph nodes are considered to be physical objects with mutually repulsive forces, like protons or electrons. The connections between nodes also follow the physical analogy and are considered to be metal springs attached to the pair of nodes. These springs produce repulsive or attractive forces between their endpoints if they are too short or too long. The layouter simulates these physical forces and rearranges the positions of the nodes in such a way that the sum of the forces emitted by the nodes and the edges reaches a (local) minimum.
Resulting layouts often expose the inherent symmetric and clustered structure of a graph, a well-balanced distribution of nodes and few edge crossings.
The layouter is well-suited for the visualization of highly connected backbone regions with attached peripheral ring or star structures. These structurally different regions of a network can be easily identified by looking at a drawing produced by this layouter.
An improved Organic Layout Algorithm is Smart Organic. It offers a slightly different range of options and usually performs better.
Determines the initial placement of the nodes from where the layuter starts to find a good resulting layout.
Allow to specify the preferred length of all edges. The layouter tries to arrange the nodes in such a way that the edges have the desired edge length. If Obey Node Size is checked then the edge length is measured from node border to node border. If it is not checked then the edge length is measured from node center to node center.
Regulates the tendency of the nodes to be placed near the barycenter of the resulting layout. The greater the factor the closer are the nodes to the barycenter. Negative values lead to huge layouts.
Whether or not to obey the size of the nodes when calculating the layout. The distance between two nodes is calculated with respect to the node sizes, i.e. for same preferred edge lengths, activating this feature will lead to bigger layouts.
This setting determines the strength of the force edges oppose on their adjacent nodes. Higher values result in edges which better obey the given preferred edge length.
This setting determines the strength of the forces nodes oppose on their topological neighbors. Higher values result in greater node distances. In this case preferred edge lengths are more likely to be longer than the preferred edge length.
Activates an experimental feature that lays out tree-like substructures of the graph in a optimized way.
Influences the quality and execution time of this layouter. Greater values may result in better quality and most likely longer execution time.
Sets the maximal duration of the layout process in seconds. If this upper bound is hit during the layout process, the quality of the may not be optimal. Increasing this values increases the likeliness of an optimal layout.
Whether or not the layout process should be deterministic. In Deterministic mode the layouter produces identical results for identical input graphs.
This tab can be used to configure the behavior of the layout algorithm if used on nested/grouped graphs.
This setting can be used to control the compactness of group nodes. Larger values will lead to more compact group nodes but interedges may be longer and nodes inside groups tend to get clutched together at the center of the group. Smaller values will result in larger group nodes in favor of shorter interedge lengths and more evenly spread nodes inside group nodes.