SDViz: A context-preserving interactive visualization system for technical diagrams

When performing daily maintenance and repair tasks, technicians require access to a variety of technical diagrams. As technicians trace components and diagrams from page-to-page, within and across manuals, the contextual information of the components they are analyzing can easily be lost. To overcome these issues, we have developed a Schematic Diagram Visualization System (SDViz) designed for maintaining and highlighting contextual information in technical documents, such as schematic and wiring diagrams. Our system incorporates various features to aid in the navigation and diagnosis of faults, as well as maintaining contextual information when tracing components/ connections through multiple diagrams. System features include highlighting relationships between components and connectors, diagram annotation tools, the animation of flow through the system, a novel contextual blending method, and a variety of traditional focus+context visualization techniques. We have evaluated the usefulness of our system through a qualitative user study in which subjects utilized our system in diagnosing faults during a standard aircraft maintenance exercise.