Abstract: A rectilinear layout system creates a diagram (graph) from information about items (nodes) and relationships among the items, such as the information which defines data bases, computer networks, and object based systems. The rectilinear layout system designates one of the items as a focus node and partitions the remaining items into clusters (sub-graphs) of related nodes. Multiple location groups are created that are relative to the focus node for the graph and each sub-graph is assigned to a location group. The rectilinear layout system then plots a location for each node in each of the sub-graphs by recursively iterating through the sub-graphs, designating focus nodes for each sub-graph, creating lower level sub-graphs, and assigning the lower level sub-graphs to location groups relative to the corresponding focus node until a lower level sub-graph contains only a single node.