Automatic Layout of UML Use Case Diagrams

Model-based and model-driven development will receive increased attention in future software production processes. Currently, UML and the related Model Driven Architecture attract lot of interest in this area, but so far most tools rely on manual visualization techniques and only few tools support automatic visualizations e.g. of intermediary transformation results to support the understanding and debugging of model-driven transformation processes. Aside from structural models or control flow specifications, in particular UML use case diagrams are frequently used to visualize high level views on system functionality and are also considered as source and target models in upcoming model-driven production chains. To support use case diagrams in future software development, in this paper we present guidelines for the layout of UML use case diagrams, a deterministic layout algorithm supporting these guidelines and a prototypical implementation of the algorithm.