2. Support for User Interaction Source Viewer 3D is a software visualization framework that uses a 3D metaphor to represent software system and analysis data. The 3D representation is based on the SeeSoft pixel metaphor. It extends the original metaphor by rendering the visualization in a 3D space. New, object-based manipulation methods and simultaneous alternative mappings are available to the user. We focus here on the types of user tasks and interactions that are supported by sv3D. While this is not directly related to solving/visualizing specific software engineering tasks it is prerequisite for a software visualization tool. One of the strongest features of sv3D is its overview features. The underlying 2D visualization construct used in designing the poly cylinder containers is the pixel bar chart [5], which generalizes the concept used by SeeSoft. Thus sv3D can show large amounts of source code in one view just as the SeeSoft metaphor. Figure 1 shows a 3D overview of a small syst...
Jonathan I. Maletic, Andrian Marcus, Louis Feng