your idea about cables seems promising
. However for more complex project it is hard to distinguish which wire is which (look at a bunch of green cables in attached picture). I advice you to higlight the wires (dependencies) when you make focus (left mouse click) on layer which is connected to other (buffered) layers. Then it will be easy to find from/to which side the cables is led out. Then add points between wires and layers just Like in Patcher (Patcher.jpg). Also I think that cables could be more visible (more lightness maybe).