High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Force-based or force-directed algorithms are a class of algorithms for drawing graphs in an aesthetically pleasing way. Their purpose is to position the nodes of a graph in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space so that all the edges are of more or less equal length and there are as few crossing edges as possible. The idea originated in the 1980s with a spring-embedder model of Eades and Kamada-Kawai; the term force-directed comes from Fruchterman & Reingold`s 1990 University of Illinois technical report (UIUCDCS-R-90-1609).