About Microcharts

Microcharts are implemented in the Asset Navigator within GraphWorX64 as a way to display Asset Equipment properties. It is important to note that they cannot be used to display a custom tag configured in the control. All you can display is a tag configured on the server. It works exactly the same way as displaying a text value in a column, with the addition of being able to work with historical tags and, in theory, dataset tags. The configuration and functionality is very lightweight, because there can be ten or more Microcharts displayed in a single column.

You can configure Microcharts in the Column tab of the Asset Navigator configuration, within the Content property. By default, it's set to Text, but you can change it to Microchart. When set to Microcharts, you can click the ellipsis button [...] next to it to configure some basic Microchart properties. Parameter Data Source is needed only if you are configuring a dataset tag (to set up axis mapping) or using specific historical tags (to set up filters that are specific only to that tag). Otherwise, you don't need to set this tag. Parameters are a standard charting property to set up a connection type (realtime/historical/dataset). For Series type, if you set it to EventBar, you'll be able to configure brush rules. If you are unsure how to configure them, you can click on the square next to the list and select from predefined rule sets.

You'll notice that this Microchart configuration doesn't allow for setting up sampling rate or intervals. This is because these settings are on the control level and applied to all containing Microcharts. This way, advanced time axis features, like commands and global ranges, can be supported. You can configure this in the Columns tab under the Microcharts section (collapsed by default). The first property, Data Read Rat,e is how often the data is read from the datasource. The several next properties will be familiar if you've ever used ICONICS TrendWorX64 Viewer. Time Range is self-explanatory. Start Frozen puts all Microcharts to freeze mode when runtime starts. Being frozen (either by this property or by command) allows for the set properties to work. Read Time Range enables the Time Range to be read from a datasource set in the Time Range Data Source. Usually, TrendWorX Viewer should be the control that writes to the same datasource.

Asset Navigator supports several time-axis commands, which should allow for even better control of Microcharts. These commands are SetFreezeMode, SetPeriod and SetTimeRange. These commands work in the same way as in TrendWorX64 Viewer, with the exception that Asset Navigator doesn't support the Show Dialog option of the SetTimeRange command. In regards to commands and time axis properties, while the behavior is similar to TrendWorX64 Viewer, it isn't an exact copy. For example, any command or datasource change to Time Range are runtime-only. Configured values don't change.

As for styling, the Microcharts again use the simplest possible way. Backgrounds and foregrounds are taken from the cell/row/control properties (e.g. Mouse Over Foreground gets applied to the microchart color when the row is moused over and any styling rules regarding background and foreground should apply to microcharts as well). The only exception are EventBars, which use their own configured set of colors and, therefore, are unaffected by foreground colors.

Microcharts use their own refresh rate (called Data Read Rate) to separate it from the general refresh rate. Also, the default for Time Range is now 5 minutes. Together, with the Data Read Rate default of 1 minute, this reflects the fact that the primary use for Microcharts will be to display historical data.