GIOTTO3D: A system for visualizing hierarchical structures in 3D

Abstract

Hierarchical structures represented by directed acyclic graphs are widely used in visualization applications (e.g., class inheritance diagrams and scheduling diagrams). 3D information visualization has received increasing attention in the last few years, motivated by the advances in hardware and software technology for 3D computer graphics. We present GIOTTO3D, a system for visualizing hierarchical structures in 3D. GIOTTO3D uses a new technique combining 2D drawing methods with a lifting transformation that exploits the third dimension to visualize hierarchical relations among the vertices. GIOTTO3D also employs several graphical aids such as user-defined coloring, showing/hiding subhierarchies, “footprints”, and representation of edges as “Bezier tubes” to improve the effectiveness of its visualizations.