complex container diagrams

Question

We're trying to migrate from LucidChart to puml for drawing complex deployment diagrams with containers, icons and complex text on the arrows. Sadly, puml is lacking in this respect.

Consider this simplified (nodes-only) diagram. When we add node descriptions and icons, a couple of arrows get screwed: now we have 3 nodes above the two buckets, whereas in the original we had 1 node above and 2 nodes below.

If I add the other parts (2 levels of containers and long arrow text), it gets screwed up hopelessly: https://imgur.com/a/tbbrS12.

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Hi,

from you second link I could see that you added a lot of directions to the arrows. Plantuml works best when you do not use the directed arrows to much and let graphviz decide how to position your elements. This has, however, an impact how the graphics looks like and that your graphic can look completely different each time you add a component. Additionally, the attach point from arrows to components is currently not optimal. 

Anyhow, I changed your graphics by removing the some of the directions and playing arround with ranking (length of the arrows), which looks like this:

http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/uml/fLPTR_8s5BxthpZBnSgaKgIsLzCq5IXZIFr0XBMNqo4v8nw9dTcEA5L__9oF1hV5WVTzVODp-ZpF-R3zg3VQe395bhAVk8ZI8gP2fP0Oa-jV1mE5suirDqcnAZIfI0f3mbn4CXlyYw-lEuMxGPwYAFbzGvdT6zA33BKXDHXV_pss3EI2r4LUfj0RBd9Kc86YoA1OfpIIAYQrJ7Yq4QGrN3iWL4fkzt-wP0cF2KfjacQN4sDpKbgANbdSew1p-CjkteQHaUfj8LFwXPs10rbkvG682qWK7L81knveEtmE7nL6AIrkmrwWTzbAfdORd4CGLX-wtDOGk4M3AzGKkFJ9_IBCKMt225Fi1RZLaqnLaP9f0M0HC4wBiiczBanUZ5Kry3Ci5GhzZrJP1ztmQb_F7wCYsf2f13DybGB2AqVA0g11k0eBYlz4CubqUsHMKM0U9j9Cnc4RBPMc2lC4xYJ6f6n9eOLf2sjR65_2J6Y38hBTmx4a1jTSh2lDszM7FE5oE9qzJA6fl4wxe5ngRgJQxVE5qFAQXCvSrhLos3JZcKub7g_QPjmPkMgKeZOyEg8sgL4UDVymJA7-AoJNrCQSatiYfRaKpU2FTzyrxgR0hd67X2fAO2PYUlc6P9VlDr4VEj96j7akpf7wBuy_GTD4LmQd_4xnuTse5yGh-zDWgvyyJtc4vdteCCBKKilEE-iQpcTFzuuhW0sSM0Bc_7jgi0ccpnLx-koGRHYcQ6YBkmO-UU7QSB5sRaHfsaQFn_FWF9XN-v9glosbCLRulFfznTU9wVzUVZWknfpz9q8ijwB6moUdwY0LUKLnII4xP4jUU9FZD9B7YzZP3x6zP7U8ddV9FABEGFraVsQNVD3HJgCUj5PsC6hHl_NxKA-lDiVSAaucVGqr5wUkp-D3nsW-Ts4UFN16uYTNvW9VbtE3_6JNMBmlfCh0QWU1xYVhwh7ADU08evPbhLbqOwqWQ_-XweAsUko6H5nawVy0

I know it is not optimal if you need to try around, but that is the downside of automatic layouting.

BR,

Michael

Comments

It used to give AtomImg exception (https://forum.plantuml.net/10163) but the latest beta fixes this. When I use container, the layout is still messed up, see old vs new: https://i.imgur.com/MRmr1lI.png. 

I played with the variant proposed by Michael:

• without containers it looks ok (left) but still worse than my variant (right) because it has bad aspect ratio (too tall): https://i.imgur.com/HaEAMbl.png
• with containers it's slightly less messed up (left) than my variant (right). But because it's too tall, it falls off the bottom edge and some nodes are missing: https://i.imgur.com/KUyFnEF.png