Instructions

This page contains brief instructions describing how to use the DrawVenn Applet and the features that are available. The DrawVenn Applet is a program that generates area-proportional 2-Venn diagrams using circles and area-proportional 3-Venn diagrams using rectangles.

The DrawVenn Applet is Copyright 2003-2006 by Stirling Chow (the author). You are permitted to run the applet for the purposes of testing, but may not use the diagrams for any purpose without written consent from the author. The DrawVenn Applet is research software and the author makes no guarantees concerning its usability or safety.

Thanks for giving DrawVenn a try. If you'd like to send me some feedback or inquire about a version of DrawVenn that produces diagrams in a number of usable formats (e.g., PowerPoint, bitmap, PostScript, and XFig), please feel free to contact me.

  1. Launch the applet. Your browser must be configured to run unsigned Java applets. We also recommend that you use the latest version of Sun's Java Plug-in. If everything is working, the following window will appear:

    If you do not have a suitable browser environment, please contact me, and I'll send you a standalone Java version.

  2. Use the Algorithm menu to switch between 2-Venn diagrams using circles and 3-Venn diagrams using rectangles as shown in the following screenshot:

  3. Use the Settings menu to toggle the color/population dialog box on/off.

    The Colors pane shows the current color and transparency level of each of the sets. Click on a set's color sample rectangle to change the color as shown in the following screenshot:

    The Transparent/Opaque slider changes how a set's color is combined with the other sets.

  4. Use the Populations pane to change the size of each region of the Venn diagram as shown in the following screenshot:

    The sizes are normalized between 0 and 100, so a region that has size 50 is twice as large as a region that has size 25. The region labels in the Populations pane specify exactly the sets that contain that region, and no other (e.g., region "a" excludes "ab" and "ac").

  5. For 3-Venn daigrams, the Settings dialog box has an Algorithm pane as shown in the following screenshot:

    By default, a 3-Venn diagram has a concurrent edge segment between regions "abc" and "ab". Depending on the settings of ABC_w*h and %h, it may be possible to draw the diagram so that all set perimeters transversely intersect. For example, with all the populations at 50, set %h to 10 and ABC_w*h to 25. The resulting diagram is shown in the following screenshot:

    This feature is a temporary hack for altering the algorithm, so it requires experimentation to understand. Also note that the values of ABC_w*h and %h are reset to 0 whenever the size of region "ab" is changed.

  6. Select File|Exit to quit the applet.

Please Help Our Research by Providing Feedback

We are starting to get rather a large number of requests for Venn diagrams with various characteristics. The current software is sufficient for Stirling's Ph.D., but now we are thinking that it may be worthwhile commercializing a more user-friendly and flexible version.

We have no idea what people would be willing to pay for (a) individual diagrams, or (b) software that would draw area-proportional diagrams. If you could provide us with some feedback on those questions we would really appreciate it. Feedback can be sent via email at the contact page.

We are also happy to help with diagram requests, but do ask that, if your budget allows, you make a token contribution to our research. This would help us justify further grant applications to support our research.

Donations can be made to the following address or to our PayPal account (you do not need a PayPal account): 

Venn Diagram Software
c/o Dr. Frank Ruskey
Department of Computer Science
University of Victoria
PO Box 3055, STN CSC
Victoria, BC
Canada V8W 3P6