Beginner’s Guide to LightningChart .NET
This page shows different Views (ViewXY, View3D, ViewPolar, ViewSmith and ViewPie3D) and essential series types in them. With them you can get a better glance of what series types to use in your application.
Please refer to User’s manual and Demo applications for more details.
XY charts
PointLineSeries
PointLineSeries is a fast to render series for variable interval data. PointLineSeries can present a point line, a simple line or just points (scatter). X values must be in progressive order.
FreeformPointLineSeries
FreeformPointLineSeries, useful for arbitrary data, is like PointLineSeries but allows drawing line point to any direction from previous point. It can be heavy to render if point count is very high.
SampleDataSeries
SampleDataSeries is series for fixed interval progressing data, often used for real-time monitoring applications. It is very fast to render and there’s no need to reserve memory to store point X values.
Area Series
Area Series presents data as filled area between base level and values. Exceed and deceed limits can be set. Series shows different coloring above or below these limits.
High-Low Series
High-Low series presents data as filled area between high and low values. Exceed and deceed limits can be used like in Area Series.
Stock Series
Stock Series provides stock exchange data visualization in candle-stick and stock bars format.
Heat Maps
IntensityGridSeries allows visualizing M x N array of nodes, colored by assigned value-range palette. IntensityGridSeries is an evenly-spaced, rectangular series, in X and Y dimension. It allows rendering both contour lines and contour line labels.
Rendering wireframes is also possible.
PixelRendering property enables the nodes to be rendered as pixels, or rectangles (the upper-right figure). This allows a very high-performance rendering useful e.g. for real-time high-resolution thermal imaging applications.
IntensityMeshSeries
IntensityMeshSeries is similar to IntensityGridSeries with the exception of not having to be rectangular. In other words, the series nodes can be positioned arbitrarily in X-Y space.
Maps
Maps property and its sub-properties can show geographic maps. LightningChart maps come in two different categories: vector maps and tile maps. The maps are shown in so called equirectangular projection allowing use of LightningChart’s series types and other objects that are practically all bound to X and Y axes, same time with the maps.
Persistent Series Rendering Layers
PersistentSeriesRenderingLayer can be used for extremely fast rendering of repetitive data, that is plotted in same X and Y range over and over again.
PersistentSeriesRenderLayer is kind of a bitmap, that allows adding rendering data incrementally in it. It keeps the graphics until cleared by command, or decayed gradually to history.
3D Charts
PointLineSeries3D
PointLineSeries3D allows presenting points and line in 3D space. Points can be connected with line similar to PointLineSeries in XY charts.
Polygon3D
Polygon3D objects allow presenting a 2D polygon, stretched to given Y range. They can be created to show simple polygons or more complex objects, for example different regions of the world map.
SurfaceGridSeries
SurfaceGridSeries3D allows visualizing data as a 3D surface. Nodes are equally spaced in both X and Z dimensions. Like SurfaceGridSeries in XY charts, it supports contour lines and wireframes.
Surfaces can also be created from bitmap files.
SurfaceMeshSeries3D
SurfaceMeshSeries3D is similar to SurfaceGridSeries3D with the exception of not having to be rectangular. In other words, surface nodes can be positioned freely in 3D space allowing warping the surface virtually to any shape.
MeshModels
MeshModels property allows inserting 3D models from external 3D model editors into LightningChart View3D.
MeshModel also supports constructing the MeshModel geometry programmatically. It allows visualizing objects and shapes that have been produced as a result of computation.
WaterfallSeries3D
With WaterfallSeries3D, the data is visualized in area strips. Areas can be filled, wire-framed and contour-lined like SurfaceGridSeries3D
Polar Charts
Smith Charts