diagrams are a mess...

[axd1967]

the concept is nice, but it has one huge drawback: there is no way to more finely control diagram layouts.

result:

in other words, PlantUML is unusable in anything more than trivial.

I'm afraid this is more a rant than a problem, but please find a way to prevent such a spaghetti...

[fredizzimo]

Hi @axd1967,

I have the same problem as you, PlantUML is simply not very useful for anything more than trivial things.

However I believe the problem is solvable for most parts at least. And I made a proposal and feature request here http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/qa/?qa=4842/graphviz-is-not-good-enough.

If you are willing to provide the source code for your diagram, I could run it through the same algorithms, and see what it would provide.

[axd1967]

diving into git does not let me find back that diagram... I should have parked it as a branch (or publish the code), but I can't find it back, sorry...

[indikaPathi]

Any progress on this thread? PlantUML is useful for sequence diagrams. However for component diagrams it draws spaghetti as soon as you have more than a handful of components . Not really what you want to show in a design review or in documentation.

[droogmic]

@indikaPathi Can you give an example?

[axd1967]

(as a side note, if diagrams get messy, maybe that's an indication that they could/should be simplified / split into more elementary ones/...)

[VladimirAlexiev]

I also have layout problems and would love to see progress on this:

• https://forum.plantuml.net/8530/complex-container-diagrams
• https://forum.plantuml.net/10161/class-diagram-layout-error-left-is-ignored. Especially the first problem makes plantuml unsuitable for complex architecture diagrams that show containers and stuff.

@axd1967 if you give the original png, we can extract the puml source with java -jar plantuml.jar -metadata image.png But the image on top is not original puml output.

[nick-lehmann]

@fredizzimo even if it's been a long time, do you still have the code you used to generate your examples? The images look very promising and could solve many issues I have with large class diagrams.

[rosecky]

Would also very much appreciate some progress on this: https://forum.plantuml.net/4842/graphviz-is-not-good-enough

[gfb-47]

Here there is some solutions that might help:

adding hidden lines a -[hidden]- b
extending the length of a line a --- b (more dashes, longer line)
specifying preferred direction of lines (a -left- b)
swapping association ends (a -- b → b -- a)
changing the order of definitions (the order does matter... sometimes)
adding empty nodes with background/border colors set to Transparent

by: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48712801/how-to-correct-plantuml-line-path

[bbergen]

Just want to add my support for this issue. I use PlantUML extensively at work, and it's fantastic for simple diagrams but the rendering gets terribly cluttered as soon as the diagram gets moderately complex.

It's frustrating because most of the times I can see obvious ways to manually layout the diagram better than Graphviz is.

My team and I have tried using all the layout tricks to force boxes one way or another, but it rarely produces something ideal.

[EdgarWesterhoven]

I maybe late to the discussion, but cannot seem to access the forum to see some of the suggestions (not even from the https://plantuml.com/ website directly). Was this abandonned?

[evantill]

@arnaudroques Maybe we could convert this issue into a github discussion ?

[windymindy]

For a moment I started to think that I figured custom layouting. plantuml.com editor example But it breaks as I add associations. Why the issue is closed?