3) Installing WinForm interfaces into Visual Studio.NET

VS2005 Instructions

• Under the Tools menu, select [Choose Toolbox Items...],

• If not selected, left click the [.NET Framework Components] tab,

• Left click the [Browse...] button and find the file "Gigasoft.ProEssentials.dll" found in the DotNet20 subdirectory where you installed ProEssentials. By default, this should be located at "C:\ProEssentials6\DotNet20\",

• Select the file "Gigasoft.ProEssentials.dll" and close the [Open File] dialog,

• The [Choose Toolbox Items] dialog should now show 5 highlighted controls: Pe3do, Pego, Pepco, Pepso, and Pesgo.

• Close the dialog and the 5 new ProEssentials components will be at the bottom of the toolbox.

VS2003 and Earlier Instructions

• Double check that the [Windows Forms] tab on the tool box is active (Pointer, Label, should be visible)

• Right click anywhere in the toolbox and select [Add/Remove Items... or Customize Toolbox...],

• Left click the [.NET Framework Components] tab,

• Left click the [Browse...] button and find the file "Gigasoft.ProEssentials.dll" found in the DotNet subdirectory where you installed ProEssentials. By default, this should be located at "C:\ProEssentials6\DotNet\",

• Select the file "Gigasoft.ProEssentials.dll" and close the [Open File] dialog,

• The [Customize Toolbox] dialog should now show 5 highlighted controls: Pe3do, Pego, Pepco, Pepso, and Pesgo.

• Close the [Customize Toolbox] dialog and the 5 new ProEssentials components will be at the bottom of the toolbox.

4) Double click the [Pego] tool within the toolbox. This places an instance of the Pego component within "Form1.vb". 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.

5) ProEssentials currently has limited point-and-click programmability.  Our next release will have extensive point-and-click features, but until then, you'll have to write a tiny bit a code. Note, when setting color and font size attributes, 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.