Bold Graph Drawings

When a graph is drawn in a classical manner, its vertices are shown as small disks and its edges with a positive width; zero-width edges and zero-size vertices exist only in theory. Let r denote the radius of the disks that show vertices and w the width of edges. We give a list of conditions that make such a drawing good and that apply to not necessarily planar graphs. We show that if r=w, a vertex can have any degree. We also give an algorithm that, for a given drawing and values for r and w, determines whether the bold drawing satisfies the conditions. Furthermore, we show how to maximize r and/or w without violating the conditions in polynomial time.