Abstract:Marching-Graph is a new visualization that integrates the graph metaphor and the spatial metaphor into a single visualization. It provides users with highly interactive maps for accessing the logical structures of information that has the geographical attributes. Instead of presenting known facts onto maps, it provides a mechanism for users to visually analyze and seek unknown knowledge through effective human-map interaction and navigation across different spaces. However, the traditional force-directed layout algorithms are very slow in reaching an equilibrium configuration of forces. They usually spend tens of seconds making the layout of a graph converge. Thus, those force-directed layout algorithms can not satisfy the requirement for drawing a sequence of graphs rapidly, while the users are quickly marching through the geographic regions. This paper proposes a fast convergence layout method that speeds up the interaction time while users are progressively exploring a sequence of graphs through a series of force-directed layouts in Marching-Graph. It essentially combines a radial tree drawing method and a force-directed graph drawing method to achieve the fast convergence of energy minimization.