Circular Chart Add-On for LabVIEW

[NormanX]

Circular Chart  Base
A flexible and easy way to create high quality circular charts with features such as anti-aliased and translucence, helps you to deal with the boring and time-consuming drawing details.

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/217432

Features

• Chart Types :  Supports multiple types of charts, e.g. , pie chart, doughnut chart, polar area chart, circular bar chart, circular slide, graduated gauge chart. 
• Chart Elements :  Multiple types of chart elements can be added to the chart, e.g. , legend, scale, grid, slider, digital, decoration.   
• Slice Modes :  Three modes for different overlapping and connecting relationships between slices.  
• Customizable :  Most properties of chart objects are customizable.   
• Reusing & Sharing :  Charts can export images for reporting, and their styles can also be saved as files for reusing and sharing.  
• Quick-Start :  Easy to use, and you can quick-start your development based on several build-in styles.        

How to Use

• Single Control :  The Circular Chart Add-On is ultimately defined as a single control.               
• Chart Styles :  Being edited or loaded with different styles, the chart can be presented in the different types listed above, or even more.
• Style Designer :  The chart style is configured by the Chart Style Designer dialog box, which can be displayed through the right-click menu of the chart, similar to the Properties dialog box of the LabVIEW controls.                                                                                                                               
• Auto Reload :  After configured, the style can be saved into the chart instance in your VI and automatically reloaded the next time. 
• Data Type :  The data type of the chart is 2-D array of SGL numeric. Each row of the array corresponds to a slice in turn, and each column corresponds to a slice parameter you specify in the Chart Style Designer, the available slice parameters include start angle, end angle, inner radius, and outer radius.

 

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/217432

http://kitx.mystrikingly.com/

Edited March 6, 2020 by NormanX
Update

[Aristos Queue]

Are those 10 charts in the first image all screen shots from LabVIEW? If so, very nice! Professional work!

[NormanX]

2 hours ago, Aristos Queue said:

Are those 10 charts in the first image all screen shots from LabVIEW? If so, very nice! Professional work!

Yes, they are the built-in chart styles of this add-on, and users can modify the properties of these chart styles to get a new style. 
In addition, users can export images of charts directly from the context menu, without the need for screenshots.

[hooovahh]

Wow yeah whole crap congratulations.  Everything appears to be native G.  It always feels like cheating when I see stuff like this that just is some .Net wrapper under the hood but this is an XControl which I would guess is a 2D picture control.  I also like that you can see the settings update as you change them.

That being said there are a few things I wish worked better.  XControl resizing is one that would be nice so things like Fit to Pane worked.  That Circular Chart Designer dialog can't be resized and it is actually too tall for my main monitor.  Even the Circular Chart Example VI is too large and I had to change the settings to allow to make it fit on my monitor.  Background color allowing for transparent would be nice but in most cases can be colored the same as the pane and you won't notice.  I also don't see any XControl Properties or Methods to change the UI programatically.  One easier solution for this would just be to allow to load premade CCS files with an invoke node.  Then if you want to switch to other settings like changing the description, color, style, etc.  Just load one made earlier.  That can help you avoid having to make so many properties and methods.

I really only played around with it for a few minutes but whole crap is there a lot of settings.  I'd often try to do something to change one part of the chart and go down a rabbit hole of playing with every control to just see what it would do and how it would change it.  The help is helpful but there just was things I had a hard time trying to figure out how to adjust.

[NormanX]

Thank you for your comments and suggestions! If this add-on is proven to be valuable by the market, it will be continuously improved.
This add-on does provide a lot of detail settings to bring more customization and flexibility, while improving its ease of use through the default built-in and external loading of chart style files. Users don't need to start from scratch every time to configure their charts. For new users to understand the functional details of the add-on, looking at the settings of each built-in chart style may be easier and recommended.

Regarding the few deficiencies you mentioned,
1. The compatibility of designer dialog and example VI in low resolution monitors will be considered in subsequent improvements.
2. Transparent background is a difficult thing, as you said, setting the same color as the pane is an easier way. In addition, users may be able to import a picture as background in the future.
3. Properties and Methods are indeed ignored currently, but they are listed in the improvement plan.

Thank you!

[hooovahh]

I don't think making an XControl transparent is difficult.  NI recommends setting the Facade VI to be "Window Runs Transparent".  Then you can color the 2D picture control to be transparent.  If the user chooses a background color other than transparent, then set the background color of the front panel, and set the Facade to not run transparent.  If that doesn't work you should be able to draw a rectangle behind the chart the color the user wants. 

In any case congratulations, it looks like you put a lot of work into this, and I hope the market finds this valuable.  I've never tried to sell any LabVIEW toolkits but I get the impression it is a difficult market.

[NormanX]

39 minutes ago, hooovahh said:

I don't think making an XControl transparent is difficult.  NI recommends setting the Facade VI to be "Window Runs Transparent".

The difficulty I said is related to the implementation of this chart, but thank you all the same.