Generating Schematic Network Maps by Simplification and Partition

The harmony of the whole and the local layout is the key to generating schematic network maps. The existing methods simply take line segments as the basic unit for schematization and easily cause global inconsistency or local deformation of schematic results when spatial distribution is not balanced. Considering the properties of connectivity and closure of network structures, this paper presents a new method to generate schematic maps by network simplification and partition. The core idea is simplifying network structures into meshes and lines. Firstly, the number of nodes are reduced and the direction and length of lines are adjusted to form a consistent simplification network. Secondly, the network structure is partitioned into a mesh set and line set. Thirdly, meshes and lines are schematized, avoiding local congestion by mesh schematization. An experiment shows the performance of our method under different constraints and makes comparisons with the classical iteration optimization method. Results indicate the advantages of our method in preserving the overall network shape and local element arrangements.