The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 21, 2002
Filed:
Jun. 09, 1997
Aprisma Management Technologies, Inc., Portsmouth, NH (US);
Abstract
Apparatus and process for consolidating the visual representation of objects into a “rollup” visual representation. A set of objects defined in an N-dimensional space and a perspective viewpoint are obtained or pre-defined. Each object in the set is then represented by a new rollup object and each new rollup object is compared with any pre-existing rollup objects to determine if it is “near enough” to any pre-existing rollup object to be consolidated with the pre-existing object. If so, they are consolidated and the new rollup object is removed. The “near-enough” determination may be made based upon a threshold minimum area of occlusion between the two rollup objects, a threshold minimum pixel distance, or a threshold minimum spatial distance between the two rollup objects. In a preferred embodiment, the rollup objects represent managed network entities (devices and/or applications) in a computer network and the rollup process provides a convenient way to consolidate information regarding a plurality of managed network entities into a subset of rollup entities which visually represent a simplified network, within a network management software application.