Charts and the Chart View

A Chartsmith Document can contain any number of charts, which may be viewed in the main scroll view (the Chart View) of the Chart Window. The chart shown in the Chart Window of any document is the currently selected chart. A chart can be considered a canvas onto which a background, a grid, all chart series, all titles, all annotations and a legend are drawn. The primary component of a chart is its collection of chart series.

You can create a new chart by choosing a submenu item of the Chart -> Add Chart menu item. Choosing one of these menu items inserts a new chart of that type after the currently selected chart in the active document. All new charts contain one series of the selected chart type. In Preferences you can associate a template with each chart type, and that template will be applied to all new charts of that type. Use this feature to format all new charts based on the contents of a specified template.

Use the Chart submenu to add or delete charts, save charts as image files, size the chart to fit the Chart Window, or Normalize the chart. You can also create a chart based on a template, save a chart as a template, or apply a template to an existing chart.

Chart components

A chart consists of the background, titles, legend, grid, series, and annotations. Chartsmith provides you with the flexibility to control and change many attributes of these components.

Background
This is the backdrop for your chart; it always draws behind all other objects in the chart. The background for a chart can be a solid color, a gradient from one color to another, or can have no fill at all. You may also add an image to the backgound, which draws on top of the color or gradient.

Title and Subtitle
Every chart has a Title and Subtitle by default. Titles are an integral part of a chart, and cannot be cut, copied, or deleted (although their textual contents may be). If you wish to remove the titles from a chart, you may hide them using the title switches on the Data View Window. Graphically, titles behave exactly like text annotations.

Legend
Every chart has a legend by default. Legends are also an integral part of a chart, and cannot be cut, copied or deleted. If you wish to remove the legend from a chart, you may hide it using the Legend switch on the Data View Window.

Grid
Every chart has a grid by default, with the exception of pie charts, which require no grid. Grids are an integral part of a chart and cannot be cut, copied or deleted. If you wish to remove the grid from a chart, you may hide it using the Grid switch on the Data View Window. Grids consist of a set of axes, axis labels, grid lines, tick marks, and tick labels.

Series
Every chart has at least one series with at least one data element. You may add as many series and data elements to a chart as you wish. A series is the graphical representation of a column of data found in the Data View Window. Series types include Bar, Line, Hi-Lo, Hi-Lo-Open-Close, Error Bar, Area, Pie, XY, Scatter and Bubble.

Annotations
Any chart may be enhanced by adding annotations. Annotations provided by Chartsmith are Text, Line, Box/Image, Circle and Balloon.


Selecting chart components

In order to inspect any component of a chart, that component must first be selected. Select a component by clicking on it with the mouse. A selected object will be highlighted with dark-gray selection knobs. These selection knobs are also used to resize the object. Some objects display light-gray selection knobs, indicating that the knob cannot be used to resize the object.

To select multiple objects, shift-click on all objects that you want to select. Alternatively, you can drag-select the objects by clicking on the background of the chart and dragging over the desired objects, as shown in the diagram below. Shift-clicking objects in a multiple selection deselects them.


Drawing Order

The components of a chart each have a relative position, front to back. When chart components overlap, you may wish to change their relative positions by using the Format->Bring_To_Front and Format->Send_To_Back menu items. These actions can also be applied to multiple selections in a chart.

The drawing order of chart series is handled differently than other chart components. Any series that are displayed on a Grid are tied to the Grid in the drawing order hierarchy. This means that a Grid can never draw in front of any series, and objects cannot be inserted between a series and its grid. Also, the drawing order of chart series are determined by the order of the series columns in the Data View. The series that corresponds to the leftmost series column is drawn first, and the series that corresponds to the rightmost series column is drawn last. This drawing order can be altered by control-dragging the series columns from their column headers. See the Data View help file for more information.