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Zedgraph based timetracking tool
Introduction:
ZedGraph is a class library, Windows Forms User Control, and ASP web-accessible control for creating 2D line, bar, and pie graphs of arbitrary datasets. The classes provide a high degree of flexibility - almost every aspect of the graph can be user-modified. At the same time, usage of the classes is kept simple by providing default values for all of the graph attributes. The classes include code for choosing appropriate scale ranges and step sizes based on the range of data values being plotted. Moreover, ZedGraph is compatible with .NET 2.0, and VS .NET 2005.
ZedGraph is maintained as an open-source development project on Source Forge. The site includes a project Wiki, documentation, interim (CVS) updates, and all release versions.
A set of sample graphs is also available on the Wiki, complete with source code (many of the samples include C# and VB code).
ZedGraph now supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1.
• For .NET 2.0, use ZedGraph version 5.0+.
• For .NET 1.1, use ZedGraph version 4.5+.
Background
There are many graphing libraries out there, but none seemed to fit what I needed. I found McCarty too quirky, and many of the other options did not have the flexibility I needed to achieve a polished look. Of course, most of the commercial packages would do the trick, but I needed something that was free. So, ZedGraph was born.
These classes will generate a variety of line, bar, or pie charts on a form or web page, given a location rectangle and some data points. ZedGraph handles 2D line/scatter graphs, horizontal/vertical bar graphs, stacked bar charts, stacked percent bar charts, error bar charts, open-high-low-close charts, Japanese candlestick charts, and pie charts - it does not yet handle 2.5D or 3D surfaces or charts. The charts can be dressed up with axis labels and titles, a legend, text labels and arrows (as shown in the example above), images, etc.
The ZedGraphWiki and the online class documentation provide lots of helpful tips and descriptions. Refer to them for more details - ZedGraph has a tremendous number of options that are not documented in this tutorial.
VB users:
This article uses C# exclusively for examples, however, all the code samples for the tutorial, plus other examples are available for Visual Basic, on the ZedGraphWiki Sample Graphs section.
Using ZedGraph as a web control
ZedGraph now includes a class derived from the Control class that facilitates access from ASPX web page code. The demo project download above demonstrates this functionality. Also, the ZedGraphWiki includes detailed examples of web control usage for two rendering modes, Raw Image and Image Tag.
Using ZedGraph as a UserControl
ZedGraph is accessible as a control from the control toolbox in Visual Studio .NET. To access ZedGraph, first launch Visual Studio .NET, and create a new Windows Application (Forms) project. Open the form design so that it appears in the current window. View the toolbox using the View/Toolbox menu command. Right-click inside the "General" or "Components" sub-pane of the tool box, and select the "Choose Items..." option. Click "Browse...", and navigate to the zedgraph.dll file. Once this file is added, you should see a ZedGraphControl option in the toolbox.
1. In your project, under the Project menu, select the "Add Reference..." option. Use the Browse button to find ZedGraph.dll, and click OK. Repeat this for ZedGraph.Web.dll. This will include all the functionality of ZedGraph into your project.
2. Add a using ZedGraph; entry to your main form code.
3. In the form designer, drag the ZedGraphControl from the Toolbox over to the form, and drag/size it as desired. You now have a ZedGraph control in your form.
4. All of the ZedGraph functionality is accessible through the ZedGraphControl.MasterPane property. AZedGraphControl.GraphPane is also provided, which simply references the first GraphPane in the MasterPane list (this is explained below).
5. In the Form designer, double click the form (not the ZedGraphControl). This will place aForm1_Load () template in your code file.
6. Again, in the Form designer, with the form selected, go to Properties, pick the yellow lightning bolt to see the events, put the cursor in the box to the right of the Resize event, and hit Enter to add aForm1_Resize event method to your code file.
7. Modify the Form1_Load () and Form1_Resize methods, and add the CreateGraph () and SetSize () methods as shown below (this code assumes the name of your control is 'zedGraphControl1'). <Note: A complete solution containing this code can be download from the ZedGraph Wiki
ZedGraph utilizes the GDI+ drawing library from .Net. This library is very powerful, but with the power comes some sacrifices in performance. You get matrix transformations of the coordinate systems, nice rendering of lines, gradients, etc., but at the price of high speed. However, there are some things you can do to help.
On my computer, a basic graph including symbols with 100,000 points redraws in about 500 milliseconds. For most applications, this is more than acceptable, but if you need more points, it may become a problem. The following are some options to try to reduce the redraw time for graphs containing a large number of points.
Versions of ZedGraph after 5.1.0 include a new optimization that speeds up the drawing of lines and symbols by up to 10x for large datasets. This option is turned off by default, because it can cause drawing artifacts for certain types of datasets that "loop back" on themselves. You can enable this optimization with myCurve.Line.IsOptimizedDraw = true.
Zedgraph C# Graph Plot Example Application
Zedgraph is a very good open source C# graph plotting library. Check out more details at my earlier post on Zedgraph. I have gone a step forward and made available source code and exe of a sample Zedgraph application which lets you have Line Plot, Bar Graph and Pie Chart.
Download Source Code (Visual Studio 2005 project in C#)
Download EXE
Below are the Screenshots of the Window Application. Copy and paste 2 columns of data from your favorite spreadsheet (eg MS Excel, Open Office Calc etc). Newline and Tab delimiters are identified and the data is sorted accordingly, and added to graph plots. The Zedgraph plot library is so easy to use, implement and extend that it just took an afternoon to come up with this Windows application, when I was trying to convince my cousin to use ZedGraph in his college project.
ZedGraph is also being used to plot graphs in IN-Motion, a Motion Simulation Add in for Autodesk Inventor which I am co-developing along with my mentor. We are using ZedGraph to plot Position-Velocity-Acceleration data, and intend to use it further more in Force-Torque graphs etc. Thanks to ZedGraph team for such a wonderful effort