Template Creator Overview

Dundas

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Template Creator Overview

Copyright © Dundas Software Ltd. 2000, All Rights Reserved

The Template Creator enables editing and manipulation of a pie chart template. A template is a binary file that stores reusable chart information, and all templates have a file extension of ".cuc". You can also create a new template with the Template Creator.

Templates define the characteristics of a chart, and are loaded by the Dundas Pie Chart Server control via the LoadTemplate method.

Pie chart properties are edited by property pages. To display a property sheet either double-click on a pie chart element or right-click over an element and select 'Properties'.

IMPORTANT: the Template Creator will only function correctly if your screen resolution is set up to display at least 32k colors.

The Dundas Pie Chart Server control can load a template and create a jpeg image from it. To minimize the amount of whitespace in the resulting jpeg make the pie chart image as large as possible in the Template Creator.

By default a new template will not display the last pie slice because it is collected. To view this last slice (which is collected and therefore not visible) open the Pie Element property page for ANY visible slice and set the Collected Data Limit to zero percent. This makes sure that no elements are collected (all pie slices will be visible). If you want to determine which slice is the collected slice open the same property page and set the Collected Data Limit to 100%, thereby causing all slices to be collected. The resulting pie chart will then display only the collected slice. To change the texture/color of the collected slice right-click over it, select the Properties menu item and then choose the Textures property page.

The values (sizes) of the slices are indicated by Tooltips which appear when you rest the mouse cursor over a pie slice.

The creator allows you to use gradient colors for the template background, legends, static notes (labels) and the title.

Some chart properties can only be set by the Dundas Pie Chart Server control (like data values or labels), while others can only be set by the Template Creator (e.g. background colors and textures, the pie orientation or the light direction). Some properties can be set by both the control and by the Template Creator (e.g. textures and colors of pie slices). Refer to the table below for more detailed information:

Property Name	Template Creator	Dundas Pie Chart Server Control
Background
all properties	Yes	No

Title
position	Yes	No
font properties	Yes	No
text	Yes	Yes

Pie chart orientation	Yes	No

Light parameters and direction	Yes	No

Legend
position	Yes	No
border style	Yes	No
font properties	Yes	No
labels	No	Yes

Pie chart
size	Yes	No
rounding radius	Yes	No
number of rounding points	Yes	No
parameters for collected data	Yes	Yes
label for collected data	Yes	Yes
number of pie slices	Yes (slices will have default values)	Yes
side texture	Yes	No
disable textures	Yes	No
disable lighting	Yes	No

Pie slice (element)
value	No	No
color/texture	Yes (saved as the default values)	No
exploded	Yes (not saved)	No
label text	Yes (not saved)	No
label font	Yes	Yes

Static notes
all properties	Yes	No

Please note that a template does not save data for a chart object.

The filename of the Template Creator is PieTEditor.exe.

To be able to resize a legend the AutoSize option MUST BE selected (in the Lables property page for a legend element).

IMPORTANT: for the Template Creator to work correctly the Intel compression library (ijl15.dll) must be located either in your system directory or at the same directory level as the Template Creator. Also, in order to use the distributed textures the "Textures" folder (which stores these textures) must also exist at the same directory level as the Creator).

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