The compact depth tree layout represents a classical directed tree layout (e.g. with uniform parent placement), which compacts the depth of the tree drawing area. It produces both straight line and orthogonal tree drawings, which is controlled by the OrthogonalEdgeRouting property. The PlugSpacing property controls the spacing between the plugs of a node. You can set a fixed amount of spacing or a proportional spacing, which means that the plugs are distributed along the whole side of the node. The layout satisfies to the following aesthetic criterias:

• No edge crossings - edges do not cross each other.
• No vertex-vertex overlaps - vertices do not overlap each other.
• No vertex-edge overlaps - vertices do not overlap edges.
• Compactness - you can optimize the compactness of the drawing in the tree breadth dimension by setting the CompactBreadth property to true. This type of layout is by default depth compact.

This layout is very useful when arranging deep, unbalanced trees with different node sizes (class diagrams being a perfect example). In cases like these the layout guarantees that the drawing is with mimimal depth.