C#.NET Charts, WinForm example Visual Studio

ProEssentials WinForm interfaces are used when creating stand-alone client-side EXEs to be distributed and ran on an end-users machine. This C#.NET Charting Walk-through includes instructions for Visual Studio.Net. For VB.NET developers, click here: VB.NET Charting.

Prerequisites:

It is recommended that the namespace: Gigasoft.ProEssentials.Enums be included at the top of your source code files utilizing ProEssentials. In C#, use the using keyword. For example:

using Gigasoft.ProEssentials.Enums;

The WinForm interfaces support adapting to changes in the parent form's font and background color. They are designed so that the grid number text size matches that of the other standard controls such as TextBox, Radio Button, and Labels. As long as you don't explicitly change the font and background color, you will be able to change the form's font size and backcolor and all controls on the form will adapt to match. Note that the default form text size of 8 points is fairly small. You may want to increase it to 9 or 10 points depending on your needs. This feature results in a clean looking user interface where the charting control appears to be a true sibling of the other standard controls.

Our .NET interfaces currently have limited design time functionality. You will have to write a little code (simple, see below) to develop your graphing solutions. In the end, you'll prefer our .NET (property, method, event) interface. 99% of your code will set simple properties.

Walk-Through:

The following information demonstrates how to create your first .NET ProEssentials implementation using the C# language. It discusses using the WinForm .NET interfaces to add interactive charting content to your EXEs. Other examples are provided within the product/evaluation.

1) Start Visual Studio.NET and create a new project targeting a [Windows Application] using C# as your language. Accept the default name of [WindowsApplication1].

Note: Under the Project menu, select "Project Properties". From the Build tab, adjust the Platform Target setting to x86. This is necessary as the following ProEssentials assembly links to a native 32 bit DLL. This setting will allow the resulting exe to run on both 32 and 64 bit systems and provide the easiest deployment. For native 64 bit, see our ReadMe.txt files in the ProEssentials7/DotNetAnyCpu.

2) When the new project opens, you will be presented the design view of "Form1.cs".

Form1.cs [Design]...

Adding ProEssentials to a Form...

4) Double click the [Pego] tool within the toolbox. This places an instance of the Pego component within "Form1.cs". Left click bottom-right corner of control and drag down-right to fill up client area of Form1. The adjacent image shows what you see. This represents the default state of a ProEssentials Graph. The default state has one subset with four data points. In the course of constructing your own charts, you'll set the properties PeData.Subsets and PeData.Points which define the quantity of data your chart will hold. You'll then pass data via the PeData.Y[subset, point] two dimensional property array. The following section shows example code of passing data. ProEssentials uses the terms Subsets and Points but you can think of these as Rows and Columns. Passing data is as simple as filling each Subset with Points worth of data.

Adjusting design time settings...

5) We recommend setting the parent Form's versions as these properties as ProEssentials will use the parent form's settings to help facilitate a uniform look among sibling controls. If new to Visual Basic, the (Name) property is probably the most fundamental property as its name is reflected in all code. For example,   Pego1.PeData.Subsets = 1; is a line of code, and it shows how the (Name) property (Pego1) starts the line.