Is it possible visualize large graph in D3?

Question

I intend to visualize a complex network ( with about 60k edges and 10k nodes) using D3.js. However, it seems the classic force-directed graph layout can only deal with about 10k edges on an ordinary laptop. Is it possible to visualize the entire graph using D3 or do you have some better choices? thanks!

Answer 1

D3 by default uses DOM elements and in general a large number of DOM elements on a page could make it very slow and unresponsive.

Libraries that use the HTML Canvas are in general more scalable. Have a look at Sigma.js . It can render on the HTML Canvas and should be able to handle larger graphs than D3.

D3 supports rendering on the Canvas too, but I am not sure if any of D3-based graph libraries support Canvas yet or not.