I think the key to visualizing the array dec you have is to remember that there are no multi-dimensional arrays in
Java. What we are commonly calling
multi-dimensional arrays are really arrays of arrays.
That said, you can think of a multi-dimensional array any way that mirrors how you are using it. For example, sometimes you can think of a two-dimensional array as a Cartesian coordinate system if you needed to track the coordinates of a fly on the ceiling. You can do the same thing for 3, 4, and n- dimensions.
I have used four or more dimensional arrays to keep totals in a report. For example, I was keeping running totals for health care costs for individual employees who are part of companies that are part of insurance groups that are summarized by regions that are totaled for the whole report. For example:
double [][][][][] RunningTotals= new double [V][W][X][Y][Z];
Where
V is the number of reports, which was 1.
W is the number of regions covered in the query
X is the number of insurance groups in the query
Y is the number of companies in the query
Z is the number of employees in the query
As I added a dollar amount for each employee, I added the amount to each summary bucket. As I printed each summary, I set each bucket to zero.
My point is that you don't have to picture multi-dimensional arrays the way Einstein would.