CHARTSMITH
Quick Start Tutorial #1
In this tutorial, you will be introduced to the Chartsmith application and its user interface, you will create your first chart and then export that chart to the file system. It is recommended that you progress on to Tutorial #2 to gain full comfort with the application.
Getting Started...........................................................................................................
- Launch Chartsmith
Double Click on the Chartsmith application icon. If you previously licensed Chartsmith or have installed a
pre-licensed beta copy of Chartsmith, ignore the next step.
- License Chartsmith
If Chartsmith is unlicensed, select the 'New License' option on the alert panel that is displayed when Chartsmith is launched. You will be prompted to read and accept the License Agreement, and if you don't accept it you cannot license the application. Next, enter the license key provided and your first and last name. Choose the license type desired (if you're not sure about License Types, see the Release Notes or Online Help's "How To License Chartsmith" found in the "Getting Started" section).
The Basic Elements...........................................................................................................
When Chartsmith first launches, two different windows will appear. These windows are:

By simply launching Chartsmith, a new document has been created with one chart in it. The Chart Window has two primary components: the Chart View and the Navigator. The Navigator holds thumbnails of all of the charts in the document, which, for the initial document, is just one chart. At this point you have no data in the chart, so the chart only has the fundamental, generic elements within it, like a title and subtitle, a grid, and a legend.
In this single chart that is in your document, you have one series.
The series is represented in the chart by some graphical form, like pies or bars, and is also represented in the Data View by a single spreadsheet-like series column. This series column will hold the data for the series, and has the icon of its series type at its top.
Working in the Data View Window..............................................................................
- Add Rows to the Series
To add rows (also referred to as series elements) to the series in the chart, click the Add Row button in the Data View. Each click will result in a single row being added to the Data View.
- Add Data to the Series
Now that you have rows in the Data View, you can directly edit them by clicking on a cell, and typing. By pressing the Return key, text control will advance to the next row. So go ahead and type some numbers into the rows that you have added.
If you've succeeded in these steps, you now have a bar chart in the Chart Window with a single data series in it. Let's add another series.
- Add Data to the Series
Now that you have rows in the Data View, you can directly edit them by clicking on a cell, and typing. By pressing the Return key, text control will advance to the next row. So go ahead and type some numbers into the rows that you have added.
- Add a new Series
Each column in the Data View corresponds to a series in the chart. To add a new series to the chart, click the Add Series Column button, which willl add a new series to the chart represented by a new column being added to the Data View.
- Add Data to the New Series
Now that you have a new series in the chart, add data to it by editing its cells in the Data View. Again, you should see the chart immediately update by adding series elements to the chart for this new series.
- Enter a Series Label for the Series Column
Each column label can be directly edited by double-clicking the column label (by default, the first column label is "A", second is "B", etc) or by selecting a column and typing.
- Enter Text for the Title, Subtitle, and the X and Y Axis Labels
The text fields at the top of the Data View Window are used to edit chart titles and axis labels. The corresponding text on the chart updates when you hit enter or tab, or click outside of the text field. Note the switches beside each text field allow you to turn labels and titles on or off.
- Hide and Unhide the Legend, Grid, Axis Labels, and Chart Titles
The chart legend, grid, axis labels and chart titles can be hidden and unhidden by using the control switches located near the top of the Data View Window. This is useful since the titles, axis labels, legend and grid are integral parts of a chart, and cannot be deleted.
The Inspector Panel...........................................................................................................
At this point you have a cursory introduction to the Chart Window and the Data View Window. Let's introduce another window, the Inspector Panel. The Inspector Panel is used to control the attributes of every element of the chart. This panel is activated by clicking the Tools -> Inspector Panel menu item, or by simply clicking the shortcut button on the Chart Window.
- Select Chart Elements to Access Controls
Once the Inspector Panel is visible, it contains controls to set the attributes for whatever graphical object is selected in the chart. By default, the background of the chart is selected - meaning if no other graphical element is selected, then the background is, by default, selected. From within the Chart View, click on the legend, the bar series, the grid, the titles and watch as the Inspector Panel updates to display the controls for the selected object.
You should experiment a bit with the Inspector Panel to see how it interacts with the chart. For this tutorial, we won't get into any of the details of the Inspector Panel, but will in Tutorial #2.
Adding new charts to a document................................................................................
Chartsmith charts are designated as being of one of a collection of chart types. When a chart is added to a document, its chart type must be specified. For many of the chart types, there are many variations to that chart type that can be made once the chart is created. For example, a Bar chart can be converted into a horizontal Bar chart, a stacked Bar chart or a horizontal stacked Bar chart, or any of the previous in 3D format. So a short list of chart types ultimately provides a long list of chart formats.
- Add a New Chart to the Document
The document that is created when Chartsmith launches contains a single chart. However, a document can contain any number of charts. So in what follows you will add a new chart to the document. Click on the Chart -> Add Chart -> Line menu item. In doing so, a Line chart will be added to the document, evidenced by a new thumbnail being added to the Navigator.
Click on each of the thumbnails in the Navigator to see how you can toggle between one chart and the other. Notice that as you toggle between the charts, the Data View contents update to display the relevant Data View for the selected chart. In this way, the Data View is similar to the Inspector Panel - both update according to what is selected.
Notice also that the icon at the top of the series column in the Data View changes as you click on one chart then the other. The reason for this is that the first chart is a Bar chart and the second is a Line chart. The icons represent the series in these charts - one being an icon for a Bar series, the other being an icon for a Line series.
Exporting and Saving...................................................................................................
- Export a chart to the file system
You now have two charts in your document. Select the Bar chart from within the Navigator. You are now going to export an image of this chart to the file system. Once there, you can put the chart image into reports, presentations, emails, etc. To do this, click on the Chart-> Export Image menu item. Once you do this a save panel will display. Select the location that you would like to store this image, and type a name for the document at the top of the save panel. At the base of the panel you can specify what format the chart image should be, TIFF is the default. Once all your selections are made, click the Save button and your image is then saved to the file system.
- Save the document
If you want to work with this document again in the future, you need to save it. To do so, click the File->Save menu item. Chartsmith documents store just like any other application's documents.
That concludes Tutorial #1. You should now have some comfort with creating charts, editing their data and saving. Plus you should have some understanding of the three primary windows in Chartsmith: the Chart Window, the Data View Window and the Inspector Panel. Proceed to Tutorial #2 for a more thorough coverage of the functionality of Chartsmith.
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Blacksmith is a division of Foundry, Inc.