MindFusion Releases Xamarin Charts

MindFusion Xamarin Chart has been released with the complete set of features needed to create and customize a wide selection of charts. The control boasts a variety of chart types like radar, polar, line, bubble, bar, column, doughnut, step, scatter etc. Part of the library are also a dashboard component and a component for financial charts.

3D Xamarin Chart

3D Xamarin Chart

Each chart type exposes numerous options to be customized in order to answer fully the requirements of the user. The control is packed with many samples that demonstrate different aspects of a chart type and offer ready-to-use code. The API is documented in details, with helpful tutorials and guides.

The chart component supports flexible data interface, which allows any data source to be used as a provider of chart data as long as it implements the Series interface. Predefined are a set of the most common data sources like XML, numeric lists, DateTime values, SQL database fields.

The innovative approach to styling lets developers control each aspect of the chart’s looks. They can alter the styling on the tiniest elements or concentrate on the bigger picture and create a global theme which can be reused.

Xamarin Bubble Chart

Xamarin Bubble Chart

The component is free to try without feature restrictions for a period of 60 days. Each license includes 12 month upgrade subscription. You can find out more about MindFusion Xamarin chart component at http://mindfusion.eu/xamarin-chart.html

About MindFusion: MindFusion has provided quality software tools for thousands of organizations and individuals for over a decade. With focus on lean software design and excellent technical support, MindFusion has been preferred by many Fortune 500 companies and world-known names from all industries and fields of business. MindFusion programming components are easy to use, with plenty of options to be customized and make development much faster and successful.

Design custom shapes with WPF Diagram

Watch here the video for this tutorial.

This tutorial will run you through the process of creating custom WPF diagram shapes using the built-in Shape Designer. Keep in mind that the Designer is intended as a sample and is limited in terms of functionality. The designer is available inside the installation of MindFusion.Diagramming for WPF but is also included in this tutorial for convenience. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will create an ‘AND Gate’ circuit diagram shape as illustrated by the following image:

Circuit shapes

Run the Shape Designer application through the ShapeDesign.exe. The Shape Designer opens up with a single rectangular shape ready to be modified.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 1

The Shape Designer does not currently support shape renaming (remember, it’s just a sample), therefore create a new shape through the Shapes menu and name it ‘AndGate’.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 2

Select the newly created shape from the list on the left. In the editor select the right segment of the shape’s rectangle and press the DEL button on the keyboard. This will delete the segment and make the shape triangular.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 3

Adjust the end points of the shape segments so that it gets deflated on both sides. To adjust a segment, hover it with the mouse (so that its adjustment handles appear), then drag the handles.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 4

Select the arc primitive from the list on the right side of the screen. Drag this primitive over the top segment of the shape (until it gets highlighted in red) then drop.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 5

This will replace the line segment with an arc. Repeat the same process for the bottom segment of the shape.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 6

Adjust the middle point of both segments so that the shape looks protruded. Then drag three line primitives from the list on the right to the editor pane. Be careful not to drop the primitives over existing elements because this will replace the elements.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 7

Align the newly created line primitives with the existing shape.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 8

From the list with anchor points at the right side of the application, drag two anchor points from the first kind (input only) and one anchor point from the second kind (output only) and drop them inside the editor. Align the anchor points with the end points of the line segments created in the previous step.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 9

This will conclude the creation of the ‘AND Gate’ shape. You can test the shape in the preview diagram at the bottom of the screen.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 10

Save the shape library. Using the same approach, recreate the other circuit shapes from the image above. The following screenshot illustrates the complete library.

Diagramming WPF Circuit Shapes 11

The shape designer along with the shape library containing the circuit shapes can be downloaded from the link below:

Design Circuit Shapes

You are welcome to ask any questions about the WpfDiagram control at MindFusion discussion board or per e-mail at support@mindfusion.eu.

Click here here to visit the official page of the control.

We hope you find this tutorial useful and thank you for your interest in MindFusion developer tools.

MindFusion ASP.NET Diagram Control, V5.6

MindFusion is proud to present you with the new version of its ASP.NET diagram control.

Below you can read about the recently added features. As always, your questions are welcome. Use the technical support e-mail or MindFusion ASP.NET diagram forum.

Free-form nodes

A FreeFormNode collects all points from users’ mouse or touch input and displays them as node’s outline. To let users draw free-form nodes interactively, set Behavior to DrawFreeForms or LinkFreeForms.. Use the Points property of FreeFormNode to get or set outline points programmatically. If the Closed property is set, the node is drawn as a closed shape and its interior filled, or otherwise the node is drawn as a poly-line. If the distance between first and last points drawn by user is shorter than AutoCloseDistance, the node’s Closed property is automatically set to true. AutoCloseDistance  default value is float.MaxValue, so free-form nodes are always closed.

Free form nodes allow the user to draw diagram shapes with the mouse of the finger

Free form nodes allow the user to draw diagram shapes with the mouse of the finger

Convert free-form drawings to ShapeNodes

Additional drawing modes, convenient for touch input, convert FreeFormNode objects drawn by user to ShapeNode objects with matching shapes. To enable them, set Behavior to DrawFreeShapes or LinkFreeShapes. The shapes against which the user’s input is matched are set via diagram’s FreeFormTargets property. By default it contains Rectangle, Decision and Ellipse shapes.

Miscellaneous

  • NodePastedScript and LinkPastedScript client-side events raised when items are pasted from the clipboard.
  • PdfExporter now creates page hyperlinks if HyperLink is set to a value in “page://{number}” format, e.g. set “page://1” to open the second PDF page when the item is clicked
  • TypeScript definitions for the client-side Diagramming API are now provided in jsdiag.d.ts file.

Fixed bugs

  • CanvasVirtualScroll mode fixed for parent div size specified in percent units.
  • Fixed bug where the ExpandOnIncoming property specifying link direction for collapse/expand actions did not work correctly.
  • Removed several global JavaScript variables created inadvertently by the control.
  • Fixed bug where ShapeNodes’ Image did not zoom correctly in ImageMap mode for some ImageAlign values.

Installer for the latest version can be downloaded here, or from the clients area on our site:

Download MindFusion ASP.NET Diagram Control, V5.6 Trial

Updated assemblies and script files are also available as MindFusion.Diagramming.WebForms NuGet package.

About MindFusion ASP.NET Diagram Control: This is a reusable ASP.NET control that provides your WebForms application with the complete functionality to create, style and present flowcharts, hierarchies, trees, graphs, schemes, diagrams in the browser. You can leverage the large set of utility methods, path finding capabilities and cycle detection to build the perfect interactive diagram that supports plenty of UI features like tool tips, multiple selection, copy/paste to/from Windows clipboard and many more.

MindFusion ASP.NET control offers you more than 100 predefined node shapes, scrollable tables, 13 automatic layout algorithms, rich choice of pen and brushes and a long list of other options that will greatly shorten the time needed for developing an online business application that must implement diagramming features. MindFusion has built many different samples and tutorials that demonstrate the features of the control and give you abundance of sample code to copy and study. You can read more about the Diagram Control for ASP.NET here.

MindFusion JavaScript Diagram Library V2.6

MindFusion JavaSript Diagram Library has a new version. Here is an overview of the new features:

Free-form nodes

The new version lets you use a special, new type of nodes called FreeFormNode. In this case the control collects all points from users’ mouse or touch input and displays them as node’s outline. In order to allow users to draw free-form nodes interactively, set Behavior to DrawFreeForms or LinkFreeForms. The Points property of FreeFormNode allows you to get or set outline points programmatically. If the Closed property is set, the node is drawn as a closed shape and its interior filled, or otherwise the node is drawn as a poly-line.

Free form nodes allow the user to draw diagram shapes with the mouse of the finger

FreeFormNodes allow the user to draw diagram shapes with the mouse or the finger

Convert free-form drawings to ShapeNodes

This release introduces additional drawing modes, convenient for touch input. They convert FreeFormNode objects drawn by the user to ShapeNode objects with matching shapes. To enable them, set Behavior to DrawFreeShapes or LinkFreeShapes. The shapes against which the user’s input is matched are set via diagram’s FreeFormTargets property. By default it contains Rectangle, Decision and Ellipse shapes.

Miscellaneous

  • TypeScript definitions for the Diagramming API are now provided in jsdiag.d.ts file.
  • nodePasted and linkPasted events are now raised when new DiagramNode and DiagramLink instances are created from clipboard contents.
  • VirtualScroll mode fixed for parent div size specified in percent units.
  • Removed several global variables created inadvertently by the control.

A trial version is available for download here:

Download MindFusion Diagram Library for JavaScript, V2.6

About Diagramming for JavaScript Library: Written 100% in JavaScript, this tool is a dynamic, browser based visualization library that uses HTML5 Canvas to draw impressive diagrams, schemes, flowcharts, trees and many more. It is browser independent, easy to use and allows you to integrate interactive diagrams for JavaScript and HTML into any web application. This MindFusion graphing library supports a variety of predefined node shapes, customizable links, rich event set and many appearance options.

The user interaction model includes resizing / moving / selecting and modifying any diagram element. The library boasts an elegant API, which is documented in details, numerous step-by-step guides and tutorials. The Diagramming API also provides TypeScript definitions. Various samples are provided to let you learn quickly how to use the most important features of the library – check them here. The JavaScript diagram builder is not only the perfect choice for creating any type of diagram in the browser – it can also arrange it the way you wish with a mouse click using one of its automatic graph layout algorithms. For more details about the features of the component, please visit the Diagram for JavaScript page.

MindFusion.WinForms Pack, 2016.R2

MindFusion suite of WinForms controls has just been released and boasts a variety of new features to make you build WinForms applications faster and easier. Here is a review of the new version:

MindFusion Chart Control MindFusion.Charting

New data model

Data that should be drawn in charts is read through an interface called Series, whose instances can be assigned to the Series properties of Chart and SeriesRenderer classes. You can implement this interface in your own model classes to avoid duplicating data. The library includes several pre-defined series classes that let you specify data via IList or array objects.

Different series types in a single plot

The new data model allows adding different series types to a single plot

New rendering model

Chart graphics are drawn inside Plot components by SeriesRenderer-derived objects. Each plot can contain multiple series renderers from same or different types. For example, you can draw area, line and bar graphics in same plot by adding AreaRenderer, LineRenderer and BarRenderer objects to its SeriesRenderers collection. Chart controls automatically generate a series renderer of appropriate type for their Series.

Dashboard

The Dashboard control can contain multiple plots, axes, legends, images, gauges and text blocks arranged in dynamic layout. Individual components can be added to dashboard’s default RootPanel or LayoutPanel containers, or for more complex layouts add intermediary panels such as GridPanel and StackPanel to the default ones. To show different types of chart graphics, add Plot2D to draw in 2D Cartesian coordinate system, Plot3D for 3D Cartesian system, and PolarPlot for polar coordinate system. To draw horizontal or vertical axes, add respectively XAxisRenderer and YAxisRenderer objects. To show gauges, add LinearGaugeRenderer or OvalGaugeRenderer, whose Gauge property contains the gauge model definition.

The new WinForms Chart has a built-in dashboard control.

The new WinForms Chart has a built-in dashboard control.

Print and export

The Dashboard control and Chart controls that derive from it expose Print and PrintPreview methods for printing on paper. Call the ExportImage and CreateImage methods to generate bitmap image of the dashboard. The ExportPdf method exports the chart to a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. The ExportSvg method exports the chart to an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file.

Styling

Values of appearance properties can come from several places in the component hierarchy. SeriesRenderer-derived objects can use attributes from their local SeriesStyle, from plot’s SeriesStyle, or from the *Series properties in current Theme. Component classes use either their local properties or ones defined in the theme. By default, appearance properties in SeriesRenderer > and Component > classes have null values, which makes the drawing code use values from the theme.

A rich choice of styling options are available

A rich choice of styling options are available

MindFusion WebForms Diagrammer MindFusion.Diagramming

Free-form nodes

A FreeFormNode collects all points from users’ mouse or touch input and displays them as node’s outline. To let users draw free-form nodes interactively, set Behavior to DrawFreeForms or LinkFreeForms. Use the Points property of FreeFormNode to get or set outline points programmatically. If the Closed property is set, the node is drawn as a closed shape and its interior filled, or otherwise the node is drawn as a poly-line. If the distance between first and last points drawn by user is shorter than AutoCloseDistance, the node’s Closed property is automatically set to true.

Free form nodes are drawn with the mouse

Free form nodes: just draw the node with the mouse and the control understands the shape you want

LinkLabel edit events

LinkTextEditing and LinkTextEdited events are now raised also when the user edits a LinkLabel. The Label property of the respective event-arguments class identifies the LinkLabel that is being edited. Label is a null reference if the user is editing link’s Text value.

keyboard16x16MindFusion Virtual Keyboard

MindFusion Virtual Keyboard has been initially added to MindFusion Pack for WinForms.

The WinForms virtual keyboard control: extended layout

The WinForms virtual keyboard control: extended layout

WPF Reporting ToolMindFusion.Reporting

Improved charts
MindFusion.Reporting now uses the new MindFusion charting engine to display charts in reports. The presentation of the charts has been greatly improved (particularly when resizing the charts).

Pie charts in a WinForms report

Pie charts in a WinForms report

Spreadsheet-16x16MindFusion.Spreadsheet

New and improved charts
MindFusion.Spreadsheet now uses the new MindFusion charting engine to display charts in worksheets. Along with the improved appearance (particularly when resizing the charts), the following new features have been added:

  • New Candlestick chart type;
  • New BarOverlayed and ColumnOverlayed chart types;
  • Several new legend position types;

Zoom
The worksheets can now be zoomed in and out through the new Zoom property.

Charts in a spreadsheet

The new chart engine makes spreadsheets even more appealing

MindFusion clients can download the installer for the latest version from the clients area on MindFusion website.

A direct link to download the WinForms pack is available from here:

Download MindFusion WinForms Pack 2016.R2

Updated assemblies are also available as MindFusion.Pack NuGet package.

About MindFusion.WinForms Pack: A rich set of programming components that provide WinForms developers with the complete list of features to build even the most complicated business applications fast and easy. The components integrate seamlessly and provide with a mouse click functionality that takes months to develop. Each control boasts various samples and tutorials, extensive documentation and numerous customization options that make it suitable for every type of software and scenario.

Further details about each component in the pack are available from MindFusion website:

Use this link to buy a license online. All components are royalty-free.