GraphVizio – A Graphviz addin for Visio

Momo — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:15:23 +0000

In the process of analysing a client’s existing database, I used Visio’s reverse-engineering tool. It works well, but the resulting diagram was an incomprehensible bowl of spaghetti. Visio does have a “Layout shapes” command, which appears to work by moving shapes with repulsive forces and the result is, not surprisingly, repulsive.

What I wanted was a tool which would unravel the spaghetti, so that I could get a grasp of the relationships, edit and revise them and layout again in an iterative process.
Searching for a solution, I found three layout programs, none of which have a Visio interface:

Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout (MSAGL), formerly known as GLEE The first version, GLEE, is free whereas MSAGL costs between 99 USD and 279 USD depending on where you buy it.
Tom Sawyer Layout is also a graph layout library, the price isn’t disclosed on their website.
Graphviz from AT&T research labs, reputed to have the most sophisticated layout algorithms, is free.

Given that the best quality was to be found in the free library, I made the obvious choice.
It took me over a year and some 11’000 lines of VB to get Visio and Graphviz to co-exist; marrying a Unix-style command-line program with a WYSIWYG interface, both with quirks to numerous to mention, was far more challenging than I initially thought.
The result, unimaginatively called GraphVizio, is available here, I hope you’ll find it useful.

Calabi Yau manifolds

Momo — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:46:11 +0000

Stumbled upon Calabi Yau manifolds quite by chance, they attempt to represent 10-dimensional space in string theory. I don’t understand a word of the article but they struck me as rather pretty geometry:

Here are some high-resolution images that I made with the excellent POVRay renderer.
Enjoy.

Maurice's Musings » Graphics

GraphVizio – A Graphviz addin for Visio

Calabi Yau manifolds