This is the first automatic area-proportional Euler diagram drawing tool that uses ellipses. It generates an exact diagram for most of the cases, and when it fails, the best diagram obtained through the hill climbing search is displayed, together with the inaccuracy values for each region. Formal evaluation demonstrates that in contrast to various circle-based and polygon-based methods, most random data sets for Venn-3 diagrams are represented exactly using desirable smooth shapes. Other formal evaluation is being carried out to investigate how well it can handle data sets with zero region areas. The aim of the current software releases is to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm in drawing exact area-proportional diagrams. More work is being carried out to improve the design and features of future releases. Thus, any feedback is greatly appreciated. It is currently restricted to 3 curves, but later on, it will be extended to handle more curves. Please acknowledge eulerAPE when used.
 


 
This page is dedicated for v1.0. The latest version (v2.0) is here.
 

Getting Started

  1. Download and install Java version 6.0 or greater on your machine.
  2. Download eulerAPE_1.0.jar.
  3. Double click on the downloaded eulerAPE_1.0.jar to run eulerAPE.

Running eulerAPE

When the applet starts, such a window is opened:



To draw an area-proportional diagram, enter the sizes of every region or click on the 'random' button to generate a random area-specification.



To view the initial diagram that the optimizer would use at the start of the search process, click on the 'Generate Initial Diagram' button.

Alternatively or consequently, start the optimizer by clicking on the 'RUN' button. Before doing so:

  1. SAVE TO FILE : select the directory and the file name where images and details of the initial and final diagram will be saved locally
                            (if required), once the search is over and a diagram is generated
  2. CURVES FOR SETS : select 'ellipses' or 'circles' to draw the set curves
  3. VIEW SEARCH : decide whether you would like to view the search process or not


While the optimizer is searching for the best diagram, a timer (hours : mins : secs : msecs) is displayed at the bottom right corner of the window.

Once it stops running, a note saying 'Exact' or 'Inexact' is displayed just below the 'Generate Initial Diagram' button,to indicate whether an
exact diagram has been generated or not.



To generate a diagram for a new area-specification, click on the 'clear all' button and enter the new region sizes.
Alternatively, click on the 'random'button to generate a new random area-specification.



For any questions, please contact Luana Micallef or Peter Rodgers (emails).

School of Computing
University of Kent
Canterbury, UK

Last updated: January 20, 2012