NetCharts® Designer v5.0 Release Notes and New Features
NetCharts Designer 5.0 introduces three new chart types to give you even more charting choices. A number of new chart component controls and a variety of chart-specific enhancements, such as 3-D dial borders and rotated, angled
axis text enhance your charts
with additional professional touches.
See the appropriate Tutorial for each enhancement. Download the datasheet.
Platform Enhancements
The primary focus of the version 5.0 release is on its improved rendering capability. The highlights of the new features are described below.
- Robust internationalization (I18N) Support
The I18N support in NetCharts Designer 5.0 addresses a broad spectrum of internationalized reports and dashboard needs, including:- Loading data from multi-byte sources
- Rendering localized charts, tabular data, and page content.
- Support for I18N drilldown operations.
- I18N API support from ASP/.NET and JSP toolkits.
- Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) Support
The AJAX support in NetCharts Designer allows charts and tables to be refreshed from HTML menu controls without refreshing the page. This provides end-users a much more polished interface for online reports and dashboards. - Improved Data Connection Control
Named Datasets in NetCharts Designer can now take advantage of global properties. The data connection template or NDXINCLUDE file lets users set global properties that can be inherited by other data connections in a project. Now you can change all of your data connections by editing one file. - New Input Form Controls
NetCharts Designer 5.0 adds two new control buttons. A date picker (calendar) control and a back button to make designing your reports even easier.
Major Rendering Engine Update
A number of significant new charts and charting features have been added to NetCharts Designer. Those features include:
Chart Type Enhancements
Heat Map Charts - New Chart Type!
A Heat Map chart has been added to NetCharts Designer in version 5.0. Heat Map charts display a rectangular grid of cells which can colored and labeled based on data. A typical use is to show the percent change in stock prices, as in the middle chart of the top row, where red is negative and green is positive change, and darker colors show the degree or intensity of the change.
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Multipie Charts - New Chart Type!
A Multipie chart has been added to NetCharts Designer in version 5.0. Multipie charts display two dimensional data sets as a series of pies with a common legend and common titles.
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Pareto Charts - New Chart Type!
A Pareto chart has been added to NetCharts Designer in version 5.0. Pareto charts consist of one or more bar sets and a single line. The bar sets are automatically sorted in descending order. The line is calculated based on the bar data and represents a cumulative total value of the bars. A Pareto chart is a specialized version of a histogram that ranks the categories in the chart from most frequent to least frequent. A Pareto Chart is useful for non-numeric data, such as "cause", "type", or "classification." This tool helps to prioritize where action and process changes should be focused. If one is trying to take action based upon causes of accidents or events, it is generally most helpful to focus efforts on the most frequent causes.
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 80-20 Pareto Chart w/ Dual Y-Axis |
 Stacked 80-20 Pareto Chart w/ Dual Y-Axis |
Dial Chart Enhancements
Two new CDL parameters allow the addition of three-dimensional borders and gradient backgrounds on dial charts. See the online CDL reference manual for details on DialOuterBorder and DialOuterFillPattern parameters.
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Axis Label Text Rotation Enhancements
The text rotation algorithm has been improved. Text can be rotated from left or right endpoints. Rotated text can be more tightly grouped, improving chart layout and readability. See the new CDL attributes for the AxisTics parameters.
 X-Y Chart showing enhanced axis label text rotation |
New Gradient Types enhancements
NetCharts Designer 5.0 supports three gradient types. See the CDL documentation on fill patterns containing GRADIENTRADIAL, GRADIENTCENTERHORIZONTAL, and GRADIENTCENTERVERTICAL.
Legend Drawing Enhancements
Several new parameters provide increased control over chart legends. LegendItemBorderallows explicit specification or the borders around legend symbols. LegendSymbolPostion controls the location of a legend items symbol relative to its text. ItemOrder is a new attribute of the LegendLayout parameter. It controls the order in which legend items are displayed. For details see the CDL reference manual.Logarithmic Axis Autoscaling
NetCharts Desinger 5.0 now supports autoscaled logarithmic axes.
Automatic Text Wrapping
NetCharts Designer 5.0 supports auto-wrapping of text. Programmers may specify the
maximum length for a string and NetCharts Designer will automatically and intelligently insert line breaks as necessary. See the CDL documentation for a new font attribute called maxLineAdvance.Anti-Aliased Text and Graphics
By default, Netcharts Designer 5.0 draws using anti-aliasing. This can be overridden with the AntiAlias CDL documentation.
Page setup and teardown controls
The NetCharts Designer page editor now allows developers to specify sections of code that are inserted at the very top and very bottom of a Designer-created page. This provides increased control over page layout and behavior.
