Third-party Charts

[chris.b]

I have been  working with Arction, a company that  makes a very fast (and good looking) .NET chart suite, LightningChart. They are  trying to see if the LabVIEW users would be interested in a LabVIEW version of  the chart.

What are your  thoughts as LabVIEW users?
Specifically...

Would you ever consider using a third-party chart?

How much would you  pay for a new suite of charts? LightningChart currently cost about 1800 euros, or $2219. Would that be possible for your  LabVIEW projects?

Which common chart  tasks would you be interested in? We've considered a high-speed chart,  oscilloscope (level triggering, scales), 3D FFT display, 3D surface (contouring  and coloring), and polar chart; but they're are definitely more possibilities.

[Pie56694]

Some styles may be available through Microsoft: http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-12073.  Do you know how Arction differentiates their charts?  I've seen a need for 3D charts capable of real-time updates at reasonable loop rates.

[Steve Sexton]

IMHO, $2200 seems to be extremely steep.

[Steve Sexton]

Don't get me wrong they look great!

[chris.b]

The primary designation would be presentation vs. monitoring. In other words, the MS charts are generally not made for live updates (15 - 30 fps).

[npoling]

Do they have something with the functionality of the intensity graph?  So far this has been hard to find in a .Net component.  Has anyone come across a component like this?  It is essentially a 2D projection of a 3D surface plot.  A few companies have 3D charting components that support this, but is is pretty slow to do it this way.

Nate

[rex1030]

The Full version of labview is $$2,599. Lightning graph would charge $2200 for their graphs?

[ClassyQ]

From what I see of their LightenChart product, it does have appeal to the eyes, but even though .NET Microsoft controls do not have very fast updates, I would have to assume that marketing department at Arction needs to have a better understanding of Free Market principles (i.e. common sense), and would appropriately price their product in a sustainable fashion - somewhere less than $1,000 USD.  Visually, I think the Microsoft .NET Chart is more appealing.

[Mr.Lightning]

Thanks for your valuable opinions.

Our charts are targeted mainly for high-speed realtime signal monitoring in 2D and 3D. Charts are highly performance optimized, utilizing the Direct3D drawing also in 2D charts. Shortly, it's a measurement charting package.

This picture is taken from our high-speed data acquisition monitor in LightningChart Pro 2.0 trial package:

LightningChart 2.0 has optimized HLSL pixel and vertex shaders, giving a good performance gain over traditional 3D programming. Those shaders are very hard to develop.

Top view of 3D surface gives amplitude colored map (intensity graph):

And it scrolls very nice in realtime even with high surface map size.

You are welcome to download unofficial LightningChart 2.0 trial package from

http://www.arction.com/download/LightningChartPro_v2.0a4.zip

The link is valid for about two weeks.

Then run the demo application to see what this chart is all about.

We have also LightningChart Basic edition for .NET with 400 EUR, but it hasn't been a success. About 95 % of license sales has been LightningChart Pro with 1800 EUR / 1 year or 3000 EUR / two years.

We are planning to leave business charting to others, like basic MSChart based solutions. MSChart will serve many applications just fine. It's very hard compete againts a free chart in .NET.

We are grateful for every idea you might have, guys!

[Thoric]

I think these charts have merit and potential, but that's a very unreasonable price-tag. I'd bring that down to about a fifth if I were trying to market it.

For those interested in Microsoft's .NET Chart tools, there's a free XControl for that here.