Modern object-oriented programs are hierarchical systems with many thousands of interrelated subsystems. Visualization helps developers to better comprehend these large and complex systems. This work presents a three-dimensional visualization technique that represents the static structure of object-oriented software using distributions of threedimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane. The visual complexity is reduced by adjusting the transparency of object surfaces to the distance of the viewpoint. An approach called Hierarchical Net is proposed for a clear representation of the relationships between the subsystems.
@inproceedings{Balzer2004HierarchyBased3D, author = {M. Balzer, O. Deussen}, booktitle = {IEEE Visualization 2004}, doi = {10.1109/VISUAL.2004.39}, keywords = {Application software;Data mining;Data visualization;Hierarchical systems;Java;Object oriented modeling;Packaging;Software maintenance;Software packages;Software systems}, month = {oct}, pages = {4p-4p}, title = {Hierarchy Based 3D Visualization of Large Software Structures}, url = {http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/Balzer2004HierarchyBased3D}, year = {2004} }