So two other things that you may not know:
1) You can use angled links instead of curved ones, so that they turn sharply (at 90 degrees if you place the VIA well)
2) You can adjust where the ends of the link start, relative to the node:
Code:
LINK link1
NODES bignode:10:10 smallnode
VIASTYLE angled
LINKSTYLE oneway
VIA 300 4000
So that the end at the bigger node starts 10 pixels to the left, and 10 down from the centre of the node. With a bit of basic maths, you can make a series of parallel links coming from the side of the node this way.
Here's a quick demo of that:
Code:
WIDTH 300
HEIGHT 300
LINK DEFAULT
WIDTH 3
VIASTYLE angled
LINKSTYLE oneway
BWFONT 1
NODE big
POSITION 100 200
ICON images/WorkgroupSwitch.png
NODE small1
POSITION 200 100
ICON 16 16 images/green-ball-64.png
NODE small2
POSITION 220 100
ICON 16 16 images/green-ball-64.png
NODE small3
POSITION 240 100
ICON 16 16 images/green-ball-64.png
NODE small4
POSITION 260 100
ICON 16 16 images/green-ball-64.png
LINK l1
NODES big:40:-20 small1
VIA 200 180
# via X matches small1's X
# via Y matches big's X + the Y offset of -20
LINK l2
NODES big:40:-10 small2
VIA 220 190
LINK l3
NODES big:40:10 small3
VIA 240 210
LINK l4
NODES big:40:20 small4
VIA 260 220