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I would like to draw a realtime chart on a WindowsForm. My platform is the .Net Framework 3.5. What the library should offer:

  • Free as in beer
  • The results should be pretty... (My standards for pretty are rather low though)
  • a HeatMap type of chart would be a big plus
  • possibly a lot of data - we are talking about several hundred new datapoints per second

Here are the ones I have found so far:

  • NPlot
  • Microsoft Chart Controls
  • ZedGraph

What are your experiences with the libraries listed above? Are there any other free libraries that you would recommend?

Oded
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tslak
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    NPlot hasn't been mantained since around 2007 as far as I know, and is generally less stable/complete than the others, so a definite 'no' to me. – Noldorin Jul 08 '10 at 09:01
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    Iv'e been using .net charting for a while and have no issues, while it might be a bit confusing in the beginning, it's very useful once you get the feel of it. – stoic Jul 08 '10 at 09:11
  • I put together a .NET Heatmap solution using C#, jQuery, and the opensource heatmap.js script. You can find it here: http://dotnetheatmap.codeplex.com/ – J.B. Jun 21 '12 at 13:41
  • As owner of Gigasoft, if researching winform, wpf, or any .net charting, see our [winform .net charting info](http://www.gigasoft.com/netchart.html) or [wpf charting info](http://www.gigasoft.com/wpfchart.html). It's not free, but for those scenarios where attention to detail is critical, it may fit your needs. There's a 7 meg demo with Winform, Wpf, and Native EXEs that's quick and easy to download, view, and uninstall. – Robert Dec 07 '13 at 20:14
  • I work for Nevron. You can consider Nevron Chart for .NET Lite, which is totally free (http://www.nevron.com) and will deliver a lot of eye candy. It works for WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET and MVC projects. –  Apr 24 '14 at 10:25

4 Answers4

12

I used Microsoft Chart Controls before. It is not bad at all, easy to implement, and has a lot of good examples too, every good for beginners. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mschart

However:

1st, it hasn't been updated for a long while since it was released.

2nd, Since it is Microsoft, Comparability is something you dont have much control of

Last, now I generally walked way from using chart controls, and using some javascript chart APIs instead, to me those makes me feel more dry, light weighted, and standard supported.

Google charts (very basic)

And this is a more advanced one: (Jquery) http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/update_to_jquery_visualize_accessible_charts_with_html5_from_designing_with/

D.J
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    Microsoft bought MSCharts from Dundas and renamed it. I use them with success, and they are quite fast. – Marcel Jun 29 '12 at 05:04
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    I made this because I dont like current options, maybe it can help others too https://github.com/beto-rodriguez/Live-Charts – bto.rdz Oct 03 '15 at 21:30
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I've used MSChart, and have had good experiences with it. It used to be a commercial product from Dundas (which it seems still to be), but Microsoft procured Dundas and made it free.

paquetp
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  • +1 i was surprised with the similarities of dundas and mscharts..didnt know MS acquired them :) – PRR Jul 08 '10 at 10:15
1

As you maybe already found out the Microsoft chart is just a snapshot from a specific version of Dundas Charts. So if you start with these charts you can easily upgrade to the current version from Dundas, but their prices are far behind free.

Within your question you wrote you have a lot of data and it should be updated in real time you'll run into problems will nearly all the graphs out there. As far as i know the best graph component that can handle a lot of data very fast is National Instruments but these are also not cheap.

So if you really need to show a lot of data in real-time i think there is nothing out there for free.

SWB
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Oliver
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0

If you're using Wpf you could take a look at Dynamic data display from the Microsoft Moscow labs.

Pj.
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