Better forget about the current FlowLayout. It didn't turn out as customizable as we hoped for and we'll be replacing it with something better next year. We have recently implemented a small language interpreter used for the graph query functionality and in our reporting tool; we plan to also use it for defining layout rules in a functional programming -like way.

For the time being if you need to create process diagrams arranged in lanes, use horizontal LayeredLayout to assign X coordinates of the nodes, then move them vertically to their expected lane positions and re-route the links. This worked fine in a few projects of ours.

Stoyan