Abstract

The goal of this project is to design a metaball graphics package for use in visualization of large object oriented software. In this technique, a metaball is used to represent a software entity and the relationship between these software entities. Appearance attributes such as size, color and texture are used to denote properties of the software entity. The software has been designed as a Java package with a well defined API to create metaballs of different radius, color and texture. This metaball API package can be seen as an extension of the Java3D API. The implementation is based on Java language with J2SDK1.4 and JAVA 3D 1.3. Hence the metaball API package can be used on any popular platform. This report first introduces the scope of the project and then covers state of the art in software visualization, followed by a detailed description of the metaball technique. Then an overview of Java3D is provided, followed by design and implementation detail of the metaball package. Finally application to software visualization id discussed briefly and conclusion. The source code of the metaball API implementation is also enclosed in an electronic format.