Change margin around plot area and title in WPF Toolkit chart

Question

I am using the Chart control of WPF Toolkit February 2010 release. The chart takes up lots of space relative to the plot area.

How do I control the margin around the plot area and title of the chart. This way, I can arrange the 10 charts I need in a grid without having to use so much space on the screen.

Thanks,

sprite.

Answer 1

I found an answer to a similar question in the WPF Toolkit discussion boards and thought I'd share the knowledge.

The only solution currently available is to style the chart myself. So basically, I took the original style definition from the source code of the toolkit and I modified it to meet my needs. I also used this to remove the legend completely.

<Grid.Resources>
    <!-- chart style modified from WPFToolkit\DataVisualization\Themes\generic.xaml -->
    <Style TargetType="charts:Chart">
        <Setter Property="Template">
            <Setter.Value>
                <ControlTemplate TargetType="charts:Chart">
                    <Grid>
                        <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                            <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
                            <RowDefinition Height="*" />
                        </Grid.RowDefinitions>
                        <dataVis:Title Content="{TemplateBinding Title}" Style="{TemplateBinding TitleStyle}" Margin="1"/>
                        <!-- Use a nested Grid to avoid possible clipping behavior resulting from ColumnSpan+Width=Auto -->
                        <Grid Grid.Row="1" Margin="5,0,5,0">
                            <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                                <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
                                <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />
                            </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                            <chartPrmtvs:EdgePanel x:Name="ChartArea" Style="{TemplateBinding ChartAreaStyle}">
                                <Grid Canvas.ZIndex="-1" Style="{TemplateBinding PlotAreaStyle}" />
                                <Border Canvas.ZIndex="10" BorderBrush="#FF919191" BorderThickness="1" />
                            </chartPrmtvs:EdgePanel>
                        </Grid>
                    </Grid>
                </ControlTemplate>
            </Setter.Value>
        </Setter>
    </Style>
</Grid.Resources>

This template removes margins to a bare minimum around the title and plot area and also removes the legend. I then used this in a user control suited to my needs and reused it many times over.

The following namespaces were defined in the header of the control:

xmlns:dataVis="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"
xmlns:chartPrmtvs="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting.Primitives;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"
xmlns:charts="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"

Enjoy!