Automatic layout of UML class diagrams in orthogonal style

  • Authors:

  • Markus Eiglsperger;Carsten Gutwenger;Michael Kaufmann;Joachim Kupke;Michael Jünger;Sebastian Leipert;Karsten Klein;Petra Mutzel;Martin Siebenhaller

  • Affiliations:

  • Universität Tübingen, Germany;Research Center Caesar, Bonn, Germany;Universität Tübingen, Germany;Research Center Caesar, Bonn, Germany;University of Cologne, Germany;Research Center Caesar, Bonn, Germany;Research Center Caesar, Bonn, Germany;Vienna University of Technology, Favoritenstraße 9-11 E186, A-1040 Wien, Vienna, Austria;Universität Tübingen, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Information Visualization - Special issue: Software visualization
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Unified modelling language (UML) diagrams have become increasingly important in engineering and re-engineering processes for software systems. Of particular interest are UML class diagrams whose purpose is to display generalizations, associations, aggregations, and compositions in one picture. The combination of directed and undirected relations poses a special challenge to a graph layout tool. Current approaches for the automatic layout of class diagrams are based on the layered graph drawing paradigm. These algorithms produce good results for class diagrams with large and deep structural information, that is, diagrams with a large and deep inheritance hierarchy. However, they do not perform satisfactorily in absence of this information. We suggest to use the topology-shape--metrics paradigm for automatic layout of class diagrams, which has been used very successfully for drawing undirected graphs in orthogonal style. Moreover, we introduce the algorithms UML-Kandinsky and GoVisual fitting into this paradigm. Both algorithms work for class diagrams with rich structural information as well as for class diagrams with few or no structural information. Therefore, they improve the existing algorithms significantly.