Common Question 17

My graph is not showing expected output. What could be wrong?

The following are trouble-shooting hints.

Check your data

Use the built-in Text export feature found within the ProEssentials export dialog.  Export the data to the clipboard and paste into Excel or Notepad.  Double check that the data exported is what you expect.  If not, this usually gives a hint to where your data-input logic is failing.

Make sure you are setting the Subsets and Points properties before setting data. This is important since these properties control memory allocation and the corresponding formula used to store and retrieve data. Also make sure you are not adjusting these properties while in the process of transferring data unless you fully understand the SubsetByPoint property.

Make sure that your graph has data and that the data is NOT all Null-Data values. If this is the case and you have told ProEssentials to auto-scale (which is the default setting for ManualScaleControlY and ManualScaleControlX), ProEssentials does not know how to autoscale data that does not exist. In this case, ProEssentials will use the ManualMaxY and ManualMinY values to determine the scale even though ManualScaleControlY is set to auto-scale.

Be sure you are not setting UsingYDataII equal TRUE and then using YData or similar Single/Double precision mistake.

The stacked style plotting methods (Stacked Bar, Stacked Bar Percent, Stack Area, Stacked Area Percent) are only possible if NoStackedData is set to FALSE.

Check some tricky properties

A few properties that can cause havoc if not set properly are:

Double check the comparison subset type properties, ComparisonSubsets, RYAxisComparisonSubsets, and TXAxisComparisonSubsets.

Double check RandomSubsetsToGraph and MultiAxesSubsets if used. If you are repeatedly adjusting these properties, we suggest you empty the property array before resetting it. You empty these arrays like: Pego1.PeGrid.MultiAxeSubsets.Clear() or  Pego1.MultiAxesSubsets(-1) = 0.  Clear MultiAxesProportions also.

It's a good programming practice to call PEreset between complex states of an object. OCX/VCL developers can also set PEactions = 20 to call PEreset. This will generally clear up problems if they are related to rebuilding a complex chart repeatedly.

Other possibilities

If you are setting properties and not seeing the changes, make sure you are accounting for Original and Custom parameter sets. For more information see Original and Custom Parameter Sets in Chapter 6.

If you cannot see your annotations, make sure ShowAnnotations is equal to TRUE. Also make sure that the annotation values are within the range of your data. The graphs will not consider annotations in their auto-scaling logic.

[K] [M] or [e] stuff on axis labels

If the [e] item does not reset, or the scale of your data is not correct, when changing data, set ScaleForYData = 0 or ScaleForRYData = 0 when passing new data into the chart.

If you see "[e35]" on an axis label, the corresponding data may be missing. It was erased and never reset.

If you see "[eXX]" with a large exponent, and developing in C or other environment which does not initialize variables for you, you may have passed an un-initialized floating point value to the chart. This can also cause other bizarre behavior at times.