3DCube's Main Page

Index

What is 3DCube? How is it implemented? Who developed 3DCube? Which algorithms 3DCube supports? Some snapshots of 3DCube (GIF files) Other 3D-related projects of our Research Group

What is 3DCube?

3DCube (3D Diagram Drawer) is a general frame for the three-dimesional representation of graphs, especially devoted to the algorithms evaluation, refinement and developement. It offers innovative features in the user interaction and contains a set of three-dimesional algorithms both taken from the literature and proposed by the authors.

How is it implemented?

• The first version of the tool was developed in C++ language, on a UNIX RISC 6000 workstation, using the Motif libraries for the management of the windows environment and the graPHIGS libraries for the three-dimensional visualization.
• A new version of the graphic driver of 3DCube which will use the OpenGL graphic library is under implementation.
• Currently a CGI demo version of the tool is available, yielding a VRML 2.0 description of the diagram produced.

Who developed 3DCube?

3DCube is developed at the Dipartimento di Informatica ed Automazione of the Universita' di Roma Tre. Coordinators are prof. Giuseppe Di Battista and Ing. Francesco Vargiu. The devicing and implementation of 3DCube was part of M. Patrignani Ms. Sc. Degree thesis.

Which algorithms 3DCube supports?

The set of implemented algorithms comprehends:
• the algorithm proposed by Therese Biedl in [BIEDL95]
• the Kolmogorov and Bardzin algorithm revised by P. Eades, C. Stirk and S. Whitesides in [EADES95]
• the Compact algorithm proposed in [EADES96]
• the Three Bends algorithm proposed in [EADES96]
• the algorithm proposed by Papakostas in [PAPA96] and [PAPA97]
• the Momentum Curve algorithm proposed in [COHEN94]
• and some other algorithms proposed by the authors.

Some snapshots of 3DCube (GIF files)

• the Biedl algorithm applied to a K6 graph (17 KBytes).
• the Kolmogorov and Bardzin algorithm applied to a K6 graph (18 Kbytes).
• the Compact algorithm applied to a K6 graph (19 Kbytes).
• the Three Bends algorithm applied to a K6 graph (11 KBytes).
• the Papakostas and Tollis algorithm applied to a K6 graph (19 Kbytes).
• the Momentum Curve algorithm applied to a K6 graph (12 KBytes).
• the Reduce Forks algorithm applied to a K6 graph (29 KBytes).

• a session of 3DCube displaying a graph of 24 nodes drawn by the Reduce Forks algorithm (72 KBytes).
• an example of use of the Snapshot utility (78 KBytes).
• an example of the morphing utility (87 KBytes).

Other 3D-related projects of our Research Group

IN3DNET is a new proposal for a three dimensional navigation system for HTML pages, developed by Marco Sbarrini and Valerio Violi.

[BIEDL95] T.C. Biedl. Heuristics for 3D-Orthogonal Graph Drawing. Presented al the 4th Twente Workshop, Enschende, June 1995. http://rutcor.rutgers.edu/~therese/ps/3D.twente.ps

[COHEN94] R.F. Cohen, P. Eades, T. Lin and F. Ruskey. Three-dimensional graph drawing. Proc. GD '94, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 894, pp. 1-11, 1994.

[EADES95] P. Eades, C. Stirk and S. Whitesides. The Techniques of Komolgorov and Bardzin for Three Dimensional Orthogonal Graph Drawing. TR 95-07, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Newcastle NSW, Australia, October 1995. ftp://ftp.cs.newcastle.edu.au/pub/techreports/tr95-07.ps.Z

[EADES96] P. Eades, A. Symvonis and S. Whitesides. Two Algorithms for Three Dimensional Orthogonal Graph Drawing. Proc. GD '96, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1190, pp. 139-154, Springer-Verlag, 1996.

[PAPA96] A. Papakostas. Information Visualization: Orthogonal Drawings of Graphs. PhD. thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, December 1996.

[PAPA97] A. Papakostas and I.G. Tollis, Incremental Orthogonal Graph Drawing in Three Dimensions, Technical Report UTDCS-02-97, The University of Texas at Dallas, 1997. http://www.utdallas.edu/~tollis/papers/incremental3D.ps

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