Where to find layout algorithms for class diagrams ?
Manfred Schneider
Hello,
a good layout of static class diagrams is a help
to understand the semantics of a model.
Currently I try to find hints about
LAYOUT ALGORITHMS
for class diagrams (like a Booch class diagram or an
OMT object diagram).
Do you have some ideas, hints or pointers ...
o about layout algorithms ?
o where to find papers or publications ?
o about organizations, research groups etc.
which do research in these topics?
o about commercial or public software
like libraries, layout programs etc.?
I appreciate your help ...
Manfred
Harald Lauer
In article <31CFE3...@sap-ag.de>,
Manfred Schneider <manfred....@sap-ag.de> writes:
>a good layout of static class diagrams is a help
>to understand the semantics of a model.
IMHO a class diagram with a bad layout is almost as useless as no
class diagram at all.
>Currently I try to find hints about
> LAYOUT ALGORITHMS
>for class diagrams (like a Booch class diagram or an
>OMT object diagram).
>
>Do you have some ideas, hints or pointers ...
>
>o about layout algorithms ?
Try
author = "Giuseppe Di Battista and Peter Eades and Roberto
Tamassia and Ioannis G. Tollis",
title = "Algorithms for Drawing Graphs: an Annotated
Bibliography",
journal = "Computational Geometry: Theory \& Applications",
year = 1994,
volume = 4,
pages = "235--282"
>o where to find papers or publications ?
The paper above is a large collection of articles in the field of
graph drawing - the automatic generation of graph layouts. Class
diagrams are essentially graphs.
There is also an anual conference with the topic graph drawing.
Proceedings are published by Springer in the LNCS series. The next
conference will be 18-20th September in Berkley.
>o about organizations, research groups etc.
> which do research in these topics?
We are doing research in this area :-)
In fact, there are many research groups developing new and improved
layout algorithms, designing and implementing graph visualization
systems, ...
>o about commercial or public software
> like libraries, layout programs etc.?
Tom Sawyer Software is one company in this field I know of. Most graph
drawing tools are in the public domain for non-commercial use. The
conference proceedings mentioned above contain also papers about graph
drawing systems.
>I appreciate your help ...
Feel free to contact me if you need further information.
Harald
--
Harald Lauer Your freedom ends
Wilhelm-Schickard Institut fuer Informatik somewhere between
Universitaet Tuebingen your fist and my nose.
URL: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/iic/Harald.Lauer.html
Andy Brice
Manfred Schneider wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> a good layout of static class diagrams is a help
> to understand the semantics of a model.
>
> LAYOUT ALGORITHMS
> for class diagrams (like a Booch class diagram or an
> OMT object diagram).
>
> Do you have some ideas, hints or pointers ...
>
> o about layout algorithms ?
> which do research in these topics?
> like libraries, layout programs etc.?
>
>
A colleague and I have written an applciation to lay-out
chemical plant schematics using genetic algorithms. It works
very well (even if I do say so myself). The user can tweak the
fitness function, e.g. increase the penalty for crossing lines
or excess line length.
All the lines follow a grid (90 degree turns only).
The same ideas could be extended to case diagrams, although you
might want to relax the line routing restrictions.
We get nice solutions to problems with 10-15 boxes and 20-30
lines in 5-10 seconds on a pentium PC. We could porbably do a
lot better with a bit more work.
A paper on it is being published in a chemical engineering
journal soon. Contact me for details.
I could send you a copy if you have a few Łk spare :-).
best regards
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