Graph Overview

Plots and charts two-dimensional data on a user interface.

• Plots or charts. Plotting data refers to the process of taking a large number of points and updating one or more plots on the graph with new data; the old plot is replaced with the new plot. Charting data appends new data points to an existing plot over time. Charting is used with slow processes where only few data points per second are added to the graph. When the number of data points exceeds the number of points that can be displayed on the graph, the graph scrolls so that new points are added to the right side of the graph while old points disappear to the left.
• Multiple plot styles: point, line, line-point, and bar.
• Multiple plots with individual properties such as name, line and point style, width, and base value.
• Cursors, which display a crosshair on a graph to mark a specific point or region on the graph or highlight data.
• Configurable axes, including customizable ticks, labels, value pairs, and captions. You can also have multiple Y axes and use axis autoscaling.
• Built-in format styles for labels, including scientific, symbolic engineering, scaling, time, and date.
• Panning and zooming at runtime. Panning is useful when the graph displays only a subset of the data that has been plotted. You can scroll through all data plotted on the graph, essentially shifting the graph's display to different portions of the plot. You can use zooming to enlarge or diminish a portion of the plot displayed by the graph. For example, if you zoom on a section of a plot, the graph displays a smaller portion of the plot in the same amount of display area, which enlarges the detail of that section.
• Three-dimensional style.

Notes

• Set the TrackMode property to allow user interaction with the graph, such as panning, zooming, and moving cursors, while your program is running.

Tips

• To get information about any of the properties in the graph control's property pages, right click on the property and select What's This?. For complete reference information about this control and its properties, click on the Visual Basic or Visual C++ Reference link.
• In Visual C++, if you select the ALL tab in the property pages, the What's This? help is disabled.