Code Arcades: 3d Visualization of Classes, Dependencies and Software Metrics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Savidis, Anthony, Vasilopoulos, Christos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Savidis, Anthony
Vasilopoulos, Christos
author_facet Savidis, Anthony
Vasilopoulos, Christos
contents Software visualization seeks to represent software artifacts graphical-ly in two or three dimensions, with the goal of enhancing comprehension, anal-ysis, maintenance, and evolution of the source code. In this context, visualiza-tions employ graphical forms such as dependency structures, treemaps, or time-lines that incorporate repository histories. These visualizations allow software engineers to identify structural patterns, detect complexity hotspots, and infer system behaviors that are difficult to perceive directly from source text. By adopting metaphor-based approaches, visualization tools provide macroscopic overviews while enabling focused inspection of specific program elements, thus offering an accessible means of understanding large-scale systems. The contri-bution of our work lies in three areas. First, we introduce a configurable group-ing mechanism that supports flexible organization of code elements based on arbitrary relationships. Second, we combine fine-grained and coarse-grained software metrics to provide a multi-level perspective on system properties. Third, we present an interactive visualization engine that allows developers to dynamically adjust rendering attributes. Collectively, these advances provide a more adaptable and insightful approach to source code comprehension.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_23297
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Code Arcades: 3d Visualization of Classes, Dependencies and Software Metrics
Savidis, Anthony
Vasilopoulos, Christos
Software Engineering
Graphics
Human-Computer Interaction
Software visualization seeks to represent software artifacts graphical-ly in two or three dimensions, with the goal of enhancing comprehension, anal-ysis, maintenance, and evolution of the source code. In this context, visualiza-tions employ graphical forms such as dependency structures, treemaps, or time-lines that incorporate repository histories. These visualizations allow software engineers to identify structural patterns, detect complexity hotspots, and infer system behaviors that are difficult to perceive directly from source text. By adopting metaphor-based approaches, visualization tools provide macroscopic overviews while enabling focused inspection of specific program elements, thus offering an accessible means of understanding large-scale systems. The contri-bution of our work lies in three areas. First, we introduce a configurable group-ing mechanism that supports flexible organization of code elements based on arbitrary relationships. Second, we combine fine-grained and coarse-grained software metrics to provide a multi-level perspective on system properties. Third, we present an interactive visualization engine that allows developers to dynamically adjust rendering attributes. Collectively, these advances provide a more adaptable and insightful approach to source code comprehension.
title Code Arcades: 3d Visualization of Classes, Dependencies and Software Metrics
topic Software Engineering
Graphics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23297