Updated to 11.0 recently, now Charts are difficult to read

[JensN.]

Hi all,

we've made an update from 10.7 to 11.0 in the last week, and now users are complaining about the readability of charts. Charts configured to be displayed as bar graphs now include a white line which seems to show a pseudo-3D-look (as the bars should be shown as nice cylinders or such thing). But if you have many bars in a chart, and on top this chart is displayed in a dashbord, the charts a quite difficult to read, because one third of each bar is simply white, no matter which color you chose for the bar. 

Who the **** came up with this idea without making it configurable? Or is there anywhere an option to have flat bars without blinking shiny reflections? And if you change anything in the old client, why not changing some really important things?

Thanks, Jens

[MichaelChatel]

Hi Jens,

I was poking through the Community, and saw that nobody had responded to your question yet.

I seem to recall another customer off-hand remarking or observing this as well, through their usage of charting, in Integrity, but I don't think they pursued it to log a defect or to report it.

Integrity uses the Jfreechart library behind the scenes, and it hadn't changed when 10.9 came out, but the included JRE was a newer version, so it's likely the newer JRE version had some impact on how these charts render.

You might want to open a Support case if you want to find out if this can be changed or addressed.

[KaelLizak]

Hello @JensN.

Just to confirm what @MichaelChatel said, CS256680 captured this, and suggests using 3D charts instead.

Kind Regards,

Kael Lizak

Senior Technical Support Engineer

Integrity Lifecycle Manager

PTC

[LLawton]

FYI, I get this when I try to open the CS links: Error - Article CS256680 does not exist.

Is this a permissions problem?

[MichaelChatel]

Hmm... it looks like that article was not published when you first tried viewing it, but it seems to be public now.  (if you haven't already seen it by now). 

[LLawton]

Yes, I can see it now. Thanks!

[JensN.]

Hi all,

thank you for answering my question. 3D charts are not always a good solution, because they are just as difficult to read when displayed in a narrow format. And last but not least: The "resolution" mentioned in the linked article CS256680 is a joke, isn't it? "Try a different presentation"? Seriously?

Kind regards, Jens

[mrump]

doing some quick research in the jfreechart api I would say the the cyclinder rendering is not the default.

In fact it seems kinda tricky to actually get it done.

This drives the conclusion that the change in the bar chart behaviour was not "enforced" upon PTC by a 3rd party library update, but an intentional code change.

IMHO this should be undone a.s.a.p - or made configurable - as we face the same problems at our company.

BTW: Is there any way to tweak the client to make use of the full potential of jfreechart? 

[MichaelChatel]

The mentioned knowledge article could definitely use improvement. I'm used to seeing such articles also include some verbiage to "contact Support" if one is hitting the issue. 

Like I suggested, it would probably be worth opening a Support case, to have this explored further. 

[mrump]

see

https://support.ptc.com/apps/case_logger_viewer/auth/ssl/case=13923698

[JensN.]

Hi Matthias,

unfortunately i'm unable to see this case, but I suspect it's a bug related to the problem described above. 😉

Can you (or a PTC employee) write a little about the case? If it fits, I'd have our company appended to the case.

cheers, Jens

[mrump]

HI Jens,

I meant just to raise a case based on this very discussion.

So your point is my point.

For some reason PTC support is already over-complicating things...