For over a decade, Chart FX has helped developers integrate charts and graphs in their reporting and data visualization applications. Unfortunately, not all situations lend themselves to be represented easily with traditional charts.

For example, consider the case of depicting data on a US geographical map or an airplane seating map. First, it will not be intuitive for end users if data would be represented in a bar, line or pie chart. Also, although you could easily create hotspots or hyperlinks in different areas of the image; as a developer you don’t have access to individual objects (such as states or seats, respectively) to set other attributes, such as fill colors and borders to visually convey real-life conditions in the map.

If your business problem would be better represented by a customized vector graphic that changes according to the underlying data then Chart FX Maps is your answer.

What is Chart FX Maps?

Chart FX Maps facilitates developers in creating solutions using SVG, a versatile vector-based imaging standard. This allows integration of dynamic maps and deployment of very impressive Windows and Web Forms applications.

As a developer, you could simply select and integrate hundreds of pre-built geographical maps; or, if you are building an application that requires a custom map, you could custom design one and tailor it to your specific requirements.

Chart FX Maps integration into Visual Studio® .NET is simple and straightforward; enabling the creation and deployment of powerful applications where end users can visualize and analyze data graphically and interactively.

Additionally, Chart FX Maps works as an extension of Chart FX, allowing map data to be viewed as other popular chart types for further analysis without additional development or coding efforts. This effectively increases developer productivity and customer satisfaction.

The process is as simple as selecting or creating a vector map, feeding the data, and finally, specifying visual attributes such as fill color and border styles. Just take a closer look…

Selecting or Creating Your Map

Chart FX Maps provides a full library of geographical maps that you can quickly integrate and deploy. They are:

World —————-> Continents ————————-> United States Europe 3-Digit Zip Codes Asia 5-Digit Zip Code*** Africa Counties by State North America Districts*** South America Oceania Antarctica

*** Contact Software FX for availability.

Although Chart FX provides an extensive library of geographical maps, there will be many situations where you may want a map of something that we do not have available. For example, a network or a stadium seating diagram. This does not mean, however, that you cannot use Chart FX Maps.

Creating custom SVG images is easy and fully documented in the Chart FX Maps Help system. All you need is a standard SVG editor, such as Adobe Illustrator®, or, if you prefer, you can commission Software FX to create the vector map for you.

For additional information please contact us at sales@softwarefx.com.

Populating the Map

Once the map has been selected or created you can use Visual Studio .NET to connect to most popular data sources like text and XML files as well as most popular database engines.

Chart FX Maps will match objects in the map to the labels in your data source. If the data source labels do not match the naming convention on the SVG file, an XML conversion file can be used to prevent unnecessary changes to the data source or the SVG map.

Setting the Map’s Visual Attributes

There are many conditional and per-point attributes you can use to highlight objects in the map; including colors, borders, gradients, point labels, hyperlinks, patterns, drilldowns and much more!

The following piece of pseudo code demonstrates how easy is to create a map of Quarterly Sales by State. Note that maps may be populated from any of the supported data providers such as ADO.NET recordsets, XML files, etc.

End User Interaction

At runtime, Chart FX Maps provides an intuitive user interface that allows end users to further customize the map view. End users may zoom, drilldown, adjust detail level and modify object attributes (point labels, font, and colors) by simply right clicking objects in the map and accessing a context menu and toolbar provided by the Chart FX Maps client control.

The following image illustrates Chart FX Maps end user interaction in the context of a browser based application:

Additionally, end users may select other views such as bar or line charts that also inherit the same visual attributes in the map, improving the data visualization and analysis capabilities of your application.

Note:

This interaction is possible in applications when rendering maps as objects, not images.

Adding Chart FX Maps in a VS.NET Application

Open Visual Studio .NET and select the New Project from the File Menu.

Add Chart FX Maps to your toolbox.

Selects Tools-> Customize Toolbox.

Select the .NET Framework Components tab and check the Map control checkbox. Important: use the ChartFX.Map.WinForms namespace if you created a Windows Forms applications; or ChartFX.Map.Server if you want to use Chart FX Maps in a Web Forms project. Once you have selected the chart control, click Ok.

To integrate the extension using Design-Time controls: Create a Windows Form or Web Forms Charting Application within VS.NET and select the Map control from your Toolbox and drop it to your form or page.

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