Charting in .NET 4

Introduction

This article gives a basic introduction to charting solutions available in .NET 4. The code will plot a different type of chart and data point depending upon user input.

Using the code

1. The chart control is available in the toolbox. A chart control can have multiple ChartAreas, i.e., more than one chart can be displayed in a chart control. The image below gives details of all the available properties of the chart control (a picture is worth a thousand words).



2. To plot a chart, values for X-Axis and Y-Axis can be provided by either binding data source to chart or add data-points one by one (We will use this approach).
3. When you add data points to a series, each DataPoint instance may have exactly one X value, defined by the XValue property, and one or more Y values, each defined by the YValues property.
4. A chart control can display lot of different types of chart like Bar, Line, Area etc.
5. You can further modify the code to have 3 dimensional effect.
6. This UML shows relationship among the chart class.

Chart co-ordinates
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The unit of measure is a percentage of the chart picture's width and height. Coordinate values must be between 0 and 100. Relative coordinates ensure that objects remain relative to one another when a chart is resized.

// The actual code accepts 5 point user input for x-axis and y-axis, the type of chart and 
// plots the chart accordingly. 
 
 
private void btnPlotChart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].Points.Clear();
    DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].ChartType = (SeriesChartType)comboBoxChartType.SelectedItem;

    if (DataPointOK())
    {
        DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].Points.Add(
          new DataPoint(Convert.ToInt32(txtX1.Text), Convert.ToInt32(txtY1.Text)));
        DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].Points.Add(
          new DataPoint(Convert.ToInt32(txtX2.Text), Convert.ToInt32(txtY2.Text)));
        DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].Points.Add(
          new DataPoint(Convert.ToInt32(txtX3.Text), Convert.ToInt32(txtY3.Text)));
        DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].Points.Add(
          new DataPoint(Convert.ToInt32(txtX4.Text), Convert.ToInt32(txtY4.Text)));
        DynamicChart.Series["UserDataSeries"].Points.Add(
          new DataPoint(Convert.ToInt32(txtX5.Text), Convert.ToInt32(txtY5.Text)));

    }
}