Anyone familiar with the ZedGraph charting library for .NET?

Question

I am working on a project for my company and I need to integrate some graphs of different types and average complexity to C# in the process of studying stock markets. I found this free library on the net (ZedGraph). If you came accross it, do you recommend using it? And how well is it supported?

Answer 1

Do you mean Zedgraph rather than Zgraph? Zedgraph's homepage is here and is described in a CodeProject article here. If you are talking about Zedgraph I can recommend it, I have relatively little experience in C# but quite a lot in data visualization. I found it straightforward to get Zedgraph up and running and producing good looking charts. Zedgraph is very good for 2D charting, I'm still looking for an equivalent for 3D plotting.

Answer 2

I hate to be a killjoy but I wouldn't recommend ZedGraph. I was working with it a couple years ago and noticed that the support was provided by a single enthusiast that seemed abused by everyone wanting his freeware with no compenstation or contributions. It's a curse faced by a lot of FOSS authors. It doesn't look like the software has been updated in over a year now and the help forum is full of queries with no responses. It looks like the author lost interest and walked. If you use ZedGraph, do it because you want to maintain the underlying code and because you want to contribute back to the user/developer community. If you have no interest in contributing, and you can't maintain it for yourself, be prepared for things that don't work and simply never will. An enterprising company could sponsor development of the software and offer for-fee support, but you need to decide for yourself if it's good enough to do that and if there is a real revenue model.

I hope that helps someone.

Answer 3

I strongly recommend the Microsoft Chart Controls For .NET Framework 3.5 over ZedGraph.

Answer 4

I can recommend ZedGraph. I have been using it with great success for several years in MSQuant, for most plots: mass spectrum display, recalibration error plots, LC peak plots, quantitation profiles and others.

Here are some screen-shots from MSQuant where ZedGraph has been used:

1. Scatter plot, with trendline
2. X-Y plot with the actual data points shown, line connection data points
3. Sticks plot, with overlayed annotation (TextBoxes, in fact)
4. Several plots in the same window, types as in 2. and 3.
5. Closer look at type 2.
6. Collage, type 2. and code in Visual Studio

The source code that is behind the first plot can be found here.

In contrast to many other charting libraries ZedGraph can also be used for scientific/math oriented plots/charts (e.g. scatter plots) and not only for business type plots/charts. Stock market application may also need scatter plots.

In ZedGraph there is built-in support for the user to zoom in (infinite) and zoom out, pan (drag while holding down the Ctrl key), save the plot to a file or copy it to the clipboard.

There is one thing I am missing in ZedGraph: the ability for the user to select items in the plot in order to perform some action on those selected items (e.g. computing some number, accepting them as verified or marking them as outliers to the application program).

Don't be put off by the state of ZedGraph's development. ZedGraph is mature, is of very high quality and can be used as-is. There is supposed to be a new team behind its further development.

Answer 5

Although development seems to have stalled, WPF Dynamic Data Display looked promising.