除錯器是程式設計師在進行程式偵錯時，很常使用的輔助工具。通常除錯器會內嵌在整合開發環境中，並且提供程式設計師文字的除錯資訊。受限於文字所能傳達的僅僅只有變數值的變化，因此更進一步地，有人設計出可以使用二維空間來表達程式間相互關係的工具。比起文字，透過二維空間圖形化的表現方式，往往能讓程式設計師更加快速且直覺化的掌握程式的脈絡。然而，一旦在二維空間中的圖形數量一多，則整個畫面的呈現往往會充斥著許多用來表達程式內部關係的「線」，以致於使得整個畫面的可讀性也隨之下滑。因此，我們的研究目標，就是藉由將除錯器的維度增大到三維，並透過適合的演算法，將三維空間中的除錯資訊作較佳的輸出。
於本篇論文中，我們針對樹狀資料結構在DIVA (Debugging Information Visualization Assistant)的三維空間環境中設計了一套排列的演算法。藉由此套演算法，可以將樹狀資料結構在三維空間的環境中作適合的排列，以達到較佳的視覺效果。

Debugger is a tool that programmers use to find the bugs in the program. It typically provides textual debugging information to programmer and is usually combined into the IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Because the textual debugging information only displays numerical values of variables, it is considered inadequate for understanding complicated data structures. There are some debugging tools that can display debugging information in 2-dimension, which is more understandable than textual information. However, rendering data in a 2-D display is often limited by the view port. When too much information is rendered together, it is useless. In this thesis, not only do we extend the rendering to 3-D but also design an object-oriented framework which enables the separation of VM programming from visualization system and particularly the compositionality of visualization metaphors.. An experimental layout visualization metaphor under the framework is implemented to rendering tree data structure, a commonly used data structure during programming.

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