Morphing orthogonal planar graph drawings

Abstract

We give an algorithm to morph between two planar orthogonal drawings of a graph, preserving planarity and orthogonality. The morph uses a quadratic number of steps, where each step is a linear morph (a linear interpolation between two drawings). This is the first algorithm to provide planarity-preserving morphs with well-behaved complexity for a significant class of graph drawings. Our method is to morph until each edge is represented by a sequence of segments, with corresponding segments parallel in the two drawings. Then, in a result of independent interest, we morph such parallel planar orthogonal drawings, preserving edge directions and planarity.