Force specific value to appear on Y axis

[Mick]

I have a chart that can have values at above/below 10,000, but I want the 10,000 tick mark to always appear on the chart to act as a baseline.

I have no idea how much the the chart might deviate from this 10,000 baseline, and I want the number of ticks on the Y axis to remain fairly consistent across multiple data sets.

Example:

If it's possible for the chart to automatically determine round-ish
numbers (powers of 10, 25, 50) for the ticks, that would be great as
well.

Thank you,

Mick

[Mick]

Is this or anything like it easily possible?

[JuanC]

Unfortunately not. We have been studying your scenario and although you never mentioned whether the charts are visible simultaneously or not we have discussed/prototyped the following features

1) Baseline: We assume a 0 baseline, this is particularly important for bars and area as the portion painted should go from the baseline to the actual value. We currently have a way to paint an axis at a different position (e.g. AxisX.Position = AxisPosition.Value; AxisX.PositionValue = 10000) but this will not result in bars "growing" from 10000. This is something we have already implemented in 8.1 (more on 8.1 availability later)

2) Baseline Synchronization: In a multiple axis chart (either using the same pane or multiple panes) it would really help if we would synchronize the baseline, this will ensure that all bars "grow" from the same position regardless of the axis, obviously if one axis goes from 0 - 20 and the other goes from -10 to 10 it would mean the first axis will lose half of its space (i.e. there is less space for the actual data) to allow such synchronization. We have already implemented this in 8.1 although the public API has not been finalized. We feel we might change the default to this behavior.

3) Step Synchronization: This would mean that the axis steps are also synchronized which might result in additional wasted space since we only want "round" steps. We are still exploring how to implement this in 8.1 and whether it would be the default behavior.

4) Tighter control of baseline position and steps: This would help in case your charts are not visible simultaneously but you still need to achieve continuity in where the baseline is painted probably expressed as a percentage of the total available space. We could also expose a property that allow you to force the steps at a specific distance. Although these property seem nice to have we are still not sure if there really is a business scenario for them. Your feedback is welcome.

Unfortunately most of these features are not easily achievable in 8.0, you could workaround the lack of baseline by subtracting 10K from your data, which means you will have to handle an axis event that allows you to customize the labels (so that you can add the 10K back). You would also have to customize the tooltips to add the 10K back.

In order to achieve baseline or step synchronization it would be harder as you would have to calculate the min/max on your own to make sure they are in sync. We expect to have a public 8.1 beta in a couple of months but we are open to provide you with an alpha build if necessary. The current plan for 8.1 is that it would be a free update but the assemblies will coexist with 8.0.

JuanC