Hernàdi, G. M. (2015). Interactive class-diagram generation and abstraction [Diploma Thesis, Technische Universität Wien]. reposiTUm. https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2015.25145
Developing software systems depend on a good overview. Creating such an overview manually is a lengthy task and the resulting overview generated by tools often contains too much information, causing more confusion than clarity. In order to gain a more suitable view on the system, unnecessary information could be hidden using abstraction techniques. However, a static decision on which data the user desires to be visible or not is not trivial for a machine as it depends on the user-s current focus. In this thesis, we will discuss techniques of calculating a layout which takes the relation of classes into account, namely the force directed layout. The proposed prototype modifies the positioning algorithm in order to prevent node-overlapping. Furthermore, this thesis introduces structured elements, which are recursive, visual and logical containers for the basic class nodes. The prototype is interactive and has capabilities to increase visual clarity. These capabilities include collapsing, expanding, highlighting and temporarily removing a set of nodes in or from the current graph. On any structural change the positioning algorithm relayouts the graph, providing a layout as similar as possible to the old one.
