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Bend Points partially missing in LayeredLayout [message #1833893]

Tue, 27 October 2020 07:47

Robert Brendle

Messages: 2
Registered: October 2020

Junior Member

I am trying to layout larger graphs of software components and their exchanged data. Basically everything works fine with the layered Layout but for some edges I am missing some bendpoints.

This is the whole graph (example). As you can see it is quite big, but the layout is still quite good:
index.php/fa/39146/0/

But for some edges I am missing bend points:
index.php/fa/39147/0/

(the red dots show where I would have expected additional bend points).

It does look like a hyperedge in the picture, but in the actual model those are to simple edges with the same source. Is that a bug, or am I missing something?

Bonus question:
Is there any option I can use to improve the layout for situations like this?
index.php/fa/39148/0/

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Re: Bend Points partially missing in LayeredLayout [message #1833994 is a reply to message #1833893]

Thu, 29 October 2020 15:37

Christoph Daniel Schulze

Messages: 98
Registered: September 2015

Member

Robert,

first of all, I'm glad that you're basically happy with the result. Just to understand the question... I named the three nodes involved:

index.php/fa/39164/0/

How exactly are the two edges defined? C -> A and C -> B?

Bonus answer: sadly, no. In fact, from our experience your best bet to keep things legible would be to collapse edges that share the same source and target node into a single edge, perhaps drawn a little thicker to indicate that it replaced several edges. Given your concrete use case, that may or may not yield more usable diagrams.

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Re: Bend Points partially missing in LayeredLayout [message #1834016 is a reply to message #1833994]

Fri, 30 October 2020 09:21

Robert Brendle

Messages: 2
Registered: October 2020

Junior Member

Hi Christoph,

thanks for the reply.
Yes, there are two edges defined (from C-> A and C -> B). The general semantics are that left side ports are required (receive) Ports and right side are provided (send) Ports.
I implemented a workaround by adding missing bendpoints when transferring the data back to my own datastructure, but I thought you might be interested in that behaviour too.

>Bonus answer: sadly, no. In fact, from our experience your best bet to keep things legible would be to collapse edges that share the same source and target node into a single edge, perhaps drawn a little thicker to indicate that it replaced several edges. Given your concrete use case, that may or may not yield more usable diagrams.

Actually I already implemented a function "aggregate connectors" that does exactly this :-)
But I was wondering anyways since the old version I've been using for a long time now (klodd-0-3-0.jar) seemed to produce better results for the line routing.

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Re: Bend Points partially missing in LayeredLayout [message #1834092 is a reply to message #1834016]

Mon, 02 November 2020 12:30

Christoph Daniel Schulze

Messages: 98
Registered: September 2015

Member

Robert,

it does seem like you've stumbled upon a bug, but I haven't been able to reproduce it with a minimal example. If there are any more info you can give me, that would be appreciated.

> Actually I already implemented a function "aggregate connectors" that does exactly this :-)

Well done. :D

> But I was wondering anyways since the old version I've been using for a long time now (klodd-0-3-0.jar) seemed to produce better results for the line routing.

The way ELK Layered routes edges around nodes is fundamentally different to how KLoDD did it. Both methods have their weak points, and you seem to be stumbling upon some right now. :/

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