rectangle the coordinates are preferably stored as arrays of x y coordinates thus in one aspect objects nodes are identified by an array of x y coordinates x i y i where i ranges from 1 to n the number of object nodes to be displayed fig2 illustrates an example of a generic network diagram before and after simplification by application program 22 according to one embodiment in this example each node is displayed as a rectangular object not necessarily an u201c object u201d in the programming sense and associations between nodes are displayed as connector lines or connectors in fig2 five nodes are displayed with connector lines in the above representation before simplification two intersections representing overlapping connectors are evident specifically the connector between nodes a and e a e intersects the connectors c b and d b in the lower representation after processing by the simplification process e g embodied in application program 22 the sum length of all associations is minimized as are the number of intersections the association lengths or lengths of connectors are preferably determined based on a simple cartesian distance metric r for example the distance between an object node i and an object node j is represented by r sqrt rx 2 ry 2 where rx x j u2212 x i and ry y j u2212 y i in one aspect association lengths are preferably minimized with respect to a target value that is the target value defines an optimal association length for each association as well as an optimal minimum distance between.