tibsoft.com

This application draws on ideas from the last 15 or so years of research on a type of space filling visualization called Tree-Maps (first introduced in the early nineties by Ben Shneiderman). It is basically a Tree-Map extended into three dimensions where the size of files and directories is mapped to area in the visualization. Thus the area of a directory in the visualization is an aggregate of the sizes of all its descendants (subdirectories and files).

Visualization tools of this type have been used to visualize everything from files systems, aggregates of huge datasets on customer activity, the daily price change of stocks on the stock market (by sector, country etc.) and individual trader performance.

My application is experimental and therefore limited to the visualization of file system hierarchies. For more generalized business intelligence visualization solutions along the lines described above (including scatter plots, heat maps, stacked area charts etc.) you you may want to check out Panopticon Software.

By default, the area of given level is a fraction (user definable) of the area of the previous. The reason for allowing this distortion is that it enables the observer to discern the internal structure of the hierarchy.

Check out this demo/review by Chris Pirillo to get an idea of how the application works (big thanks Chris) or proceed directly to the download link below.

Download: StepTree1.8.1.702.zip

A Japanese localization of the application by Asabukuro Dongorosu (big thanks).

The application is free for non-commercial use and should work on any Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP PC with a functional OpenGL implementation. Performance will of course vary depending on the graphics card, processor and memory configuration.

However if you find this software useful feel free to donate whatever sum you think is appropriate.