Heuristics approach to automatic data flow diagram layout

Abstract

This paper presents a Heuristics method for the automatic placement of DFDs. It fulfills the whole set of aesthetics requirement for a nice DFD layout within acceptable timebound. The system allocates the process with most data flows at the center of a 2D grid space and effectively handles the positional preference for entities, processes and data stores. The Testcut function detects any crisscrossing of data flows and any cutting of DFD objects. The Pop function pops up those objects of high intersection weightage to the upper layer under aesthetics optimization. This 3D DFD contains only linear data flows with all crisscrossings eliminated. A non-cutting connection between two objects can be seen clearly by rotating the 3D DFD at every 90 degree step. Thus the Heuristics method realizes the abstraction of the Automatic Diagram Creation.