Traffic is an important factor in any city. The urban road network becomes more complex along with the development of urban traffic. Such complexity leads to visual disturbance

affects the line planning

interrupts the transfer of passengers from urban to metro buses

results in rapid positioning

and many others. Thus

line deformation has become an important research topic in the study of information visualization. To address this issue

we propose an automatic layout deformation algorithm of a formal road system based on constraint rules to improve the traffic network. Thus

users can rapidly find the routes to their destination points on the actual traffic map and reflect those routes on the actual map easily using our method. The key points are extracted by preprocessing actual map data to generate an initial line map that is used as layout. Afterward

the constraint rules of the angle rule

side length rule

and non-overlapping rule are implemented using a force-directed algorithm. Multi-objective optimization is then performed using the hill climbing algorithm to complete the task of restricting the line direction. We perform a subjective evaluation by employing the questionnaire survey method and use Road Net of Hefei City in China and Retro Map of Mexico as actual cases. The results of the experimental and comparative analysis reveal that around 69.6% of all users acknowledge the importance of legibility

aesthetic

convenience

and practicality. We perform a user planning route experiment in which the starting point is the same as the destination point. Each group of participants save 26.2% of their time in the user planning path tests. The line deformation that is proposed based on the constraint rules and changes can transform a complex urban road into a simple line map that can be easily understood by individuals. This technique eases the contradiction between complex urban circuits and the limitations of human memory and effectively prevents visual noise from complex urban road networks. This method is suitable for route planning

transferring between urban and metro buses

rapid positioning

and so on

thereby improving road efficiency and saving a large amount of time.