Steema Central

I am using 'irregular grid' although I am not sure what irregular grid actually means ?

1. I do not get an event for each position on the chart (and if I record events I get some of the values being asked for twice). So i can not set all the colours.

2. I do not want to to see some of the surface at all (ie it stands for no data as opposed to the data value being 0) so do not give a value to all points. For this data (say i do not provide a data point in the middle of the chart) the chart is not plotted properly at all. The chart also displays differently depending on how I load up the data (ie if I loop over x then z I get a different chart than looping over z then x). One of the two graphs will be correct.

How should I be doing my 3d chart ?

The IrregularGrid property controls if X and Z values should be equidistant or not.

1. I do not get an event for each position on the chart (and if I record events I get some of the values being asked for twice). So i can not set all the colours.

You could use series BeforeDrawEvent.

Please have a look at this VCL forum thread. It is a case very similar to yours and can also be easily ported to .NET. Also notice that map series are available with TeeChart for .NET v2 BETA which can already be downloaded from our customer download area.

Does that mean that the X is equidistant and the Z is equidistant, but the distances do not have to be the same (this is very unclear in the documentation)

May be I am going around this the wrong way. I am trying to set the colour of each rectangle on the 3d surface plot. It appears that the colour used for a rectangle is the colour applied to the bottom right hand corner (correct ?)

I was using GetValueColour to request this value. Why is this event not asking questions for all points ?

Is it alright to simply not assign data to some of the points in a grid ?
How should I be doing my 3d chart ?

Unfortunately I have just noticed this bug before rolling out a product to a client, I can not really use Beta software.

I am also unsure which bit of the VCL issue relates to my problem.

Does that mean that the X is equidistant and the Z is equidistant, but the distances do not have to be the same (this is very unclear in the documentation)

Please have a look at the TeeChart features demo, available at the TeeChart Program group, and search for Irregular grid. Hope this helps you understand this method.

my x axis goes from 1 to 7 with steps of .5
my z axis goes from 1 to 5 with step of .5

Is this regular or not ? (when I change the property to regular, my plot looks even weirder)

for (double x=1; x<=7; x=x+0.5) //rows
				for (double z=1;z<=5; z=z+0.5) //columns
				{
					y = Math.Sin(z*Math.PI/10.0)*Math.Cos(x*Math.PI/5.0);  // example Y value
					colorGrid1.Add(x,y,z);
				}

(however I do want to do x 1 to 7 steps 1, z 1 to 5 step .5 aswell)

I simply do not understand what regular means, does it mean
equidistant in x and y with the same separation
equidistant in x and y with the same range
equidistant in x and with the same separation and same range

I simply have a plot which could be drawn on graph paper where the x separation and y spearation are regular, but different.

What is the 'implication' of regular or not, how does that change my interaction with the API.

procedure TSurfaceHolesForm.BitBtn2Click(Sender: TObject);
var x,z:Integer;
    tmp:Double;
begin
  CheckBox1.Enabled:=True;
  Series1.Clear;
  for x:=1 to 10 do
    for z:=1 to 10 do
    begin
      tmp:=cos(x/10.0)*sin(z/10.0);

      { apply hole at cells (5,5) to (6,6) }
      if ((x=5) or (x=6)) and ((z=5) or (z=6)) then
         Series1.AddXYZ( x, tmp, z, '', clNone )  { <-- NULL cell }
      else
         Series1.AddXYZ( x, tmp, z );
    end;
end;