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

Image of XY view in LightningChart for WPF and Winforms

XY charts (ViewXY) allow two-dimensional data visualization in different ways and formats. All series are bound to axis value ranges.
Basic graph area and axes of an XY chart is presented on the left.

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.

Bar Series

Bar Series allows displaying data in horizontal or vertical bars.

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.

PolygonSeries

PolygonSeries renders a fill and a borderline, by given border path.

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.

Intensity mesh circle for WPF and WinForms

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.

Image of wind data chart example for WPF and WinForms.

Image of world map chart example for WPF and WinForms

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.

Annotations

Annotations let you display mouse-interactive text labels or graphics anywhere in the chart area.

The annotations can also be used when custom graphics must be rendered on the screen, as they can be rendered in different styles and shapes.

3D Charts

Image of XYZ view in LightningChart for WPF and WinForms.

3D charts (View3D) visualizes data in 3D space. 3D model can be zoomed, rotated and lit up with various ways. Different series types can be placed into same 3D view to make a combined visualization.

The basic 3D chart showing walls and axes is presented on the left.

PointLineSeries3D

PointLineSeries3D allows presenting points and line in 3D space. Points can be connected with line similar to PointLineSeries in XY charts.

BarSeries3D

BarSeries3D allows bar data visualization in 3D.

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.

Image of world population chart for WPF and WinForms.

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

Volume Rendering

VolumeModels is a tool for volume data visualisation via Direct Volume Rendering. It takes the volume data inside and visualizes it. An image is produced by the algorithm via the volume data sampling along the tracks of the rays which travel inside the dataset.

Image of volumetric head example for WPF and WinForms.

Image of 3D volume rendering chart example for WPF and WinForms.

Polar Charts

Polar Charts (ViewPolar) allow data visualization in A polar format. The data point position is determined by angular value and amplitude (compare angle as X and amplitude Y in ViewXY).

Polar charts support many same features the other charts do, for example PointLineSeries, palette coloring and Area Series.

Smith Charts

Smith charts are generally used in electronics in impedance measurements and impedance matching applications.

SmithView’s PointLineSeries can be used to draw a line, group of points or point-line as in other views.

Pie Charts

Traditional pie chart and a donut shaped 3D pie chart.