How do I build a flash/flex chart control frsom scratch ?

Question

Hi, Im interested in creating a flash control for a graphing solution. I consider myself an absolute beginner in flash having done a few designs on flash and using scripts to run them ages ago. Im prepared to learn it all over again and get some cool flash charts done. Please tell me some resources, books and stuff that I could use to create my component.

thanx in advance, Saint

Answer 1

I've tried it myself and didn't think it was the hassle to do it from scratch. My best advice to you is to use Flex built in chart controls. But if you prefer to do it manually so the first thing to do is to do some rectangles, if you want to do a bar chart. http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/display/Graphics.html

Answer 2

Take a look at Open Flash Chart. Nice looking charts with source code written in Flash. Even if you want to write your own, you can take a look at some code to get some ideas.

Answer 3

The best and easiest graphics framework I've seen is degrafa .

Here is a brief comparison between degrafa and the native drawing api. I believe that much of the way degrapha does things has been worked into the new flex 4 (but still in beta) framework.

For specific charts Axiis is an open source data visualization framework built using degrafa.

For creating components these MAX presentations should jump start you:

Creating new components in flex 3.

Diving deep with the flex component lifecycle.