BY Earl Greer - 09/18/2000

A complete diagram can make installing and maintaining a network much easier. The key is to find a diagramming software product that is easy to use, visually interesting and logically organized. In a crowded field, netViz stands out in all those areas and the new 3-D feature literally adds a new dimension to its usefulness.

Bear in mind, however, that netViz's new 3-D capabilities demand a lot of your computer's resources. By the book, netViz 3-D needs at least a 300 MHz Intel Corp. Pentium computer with 128M of RAM. Knowing that any 3-D processing involves massive computations, I selected a Dell OptiPlex GX110 with a 667 MHz processor and 256M of RAM.

Just to see if it would work, I first tried using netViz without a 3-D accelerator card. Everything worked OK, but the seconds I had to wait while rotating a 3-D image seemed like hours. There was no problem, of course, with 2-D components.

I found an older Diamond Edge 3-D 3400XL accelerator card with 4M of video RAM, and it worked perfectly. Installation from the CD-ROM took only a few minutes, and documentation is generally strong.

Like all data visualization products in its class, netViz is crammed with useful functions. Give yourself at least a week to learn how to use netViz and even longer to master it. In a short time, I was able to create a new network-diagramming project, populating it with the auto discovery feature. I especially like the netViz feature that allows you to orient diagrams by placing them on maps and photographs. netViz comes with a gallery of maps, but I found an adequate aerial photo of my own campus on the World Wide Web. Everything is controlled from the main screen, which has a Microsoft Corp. Internet Explorer-like interface. A pane on the left of the screen shows a tree structure of the current project, providing easy navigation. netViz conveniently keeps all data on a project in a single file, so the tree structure is actually showing the organization of that file. Graphics and data are integrated together in the structure of the file.

The large pane on the right displays the diagrams. An optional small Inspector window gives you information on links as you click on them, and another small Previewer window gives a reduced-size picture of objects as your cursor hovers over their icons. Double clicking an object drills down to the next level, just as you would expect it to.

As noted above, the biggest enhancement in this new version of netViz is 3-D views. In 3-D views, there is a small window on the left with a miniature image of the main display. The small image is encased in what looks like a geodesic dome, showing how the display will appear as you select different viewpoints. This saves a lot of processor work as you adjust the small image to your liking before moving the large image.

One of the unique features of netViz is the ability to link graphics to external databases using a drag-and-drop interface. You can even link projects to databases and perform automatic refreshes. But be sure to back up any historical data you need, as older project data is erased by new information.

The netViz 3-D Web publishing software is a separate purchase. Like its competitor, Microsoft's Visio 2000, netViz can export files for use as Web pages, but netViz adds the ability to publish the diagrams along with embedded data. That means anyone browsing the Web site can drill down to underlying object information and also perform data searches.

Though netViz has been used mainly for network documentation, it can actually be used for a variety of tasks including workflow mapping and database visualization. I'd like to see animation and more data monitoring features added, such as an alarm when a change in a source database shows that a network connection is down or has been changed.

Additional statistical and reporting features would be useful, but netViz already has some very nice data search capabilities. The price of netViz 5.0 is £790 and is available in the UK through Kenson Network Engineering. Overall, netViz is good value tool that won't disappoint.

--Greer is a senior network analyst at a large Texas state agency. His e-mail address is Earl.Greer@dhs.state.tx.us.

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