QwtPlot x axis label

[ldg20]

Hello all,

I have a QwtPlot that is in real time and sliding. I want to have 400 x values visable. Initially the x axis was auto scaling and being deleted on the left and increasing on the right. This looks really bad. I want it to have the graph look like it is going off the page on both left and right.

I accomplished this with this function call:

plot->setAxisMaxMajor(QwtPlot::xBottom, 400);

Now the problem is I have 400 numbers marking each x axis tick. I have been looking around to no avail for a function to limit these numbers and only show maybe 4 with intervals of 100.

Can someone help me please? Thank you!

[Uwe]

I have a QwtPlot that is in real time and sliding. I want to have 400 x values visable. Initially the x axis was auto scaling and being deleted on the left and increasing on the right. This looks really bad. I want it to have the graph look like it is going off the page on both left and right.

There are several option how to configure the auto-scaler and the layout of a plot. Unfortunately I didn't understand what you tried and what didn't work. So it is hard to say if there is an easy solution, but maybe QwtLinearScaleEngine::Floating is what you are looking for ?

Note that you can turn off autoscaling by assigning the range manually: QwtPlot::setAxisScale. The scale engine will find reasonable ticks regardless if the range is the result of autoscaling or manually assigned.

Now the problem is I have 400 numbers marking each x axis tick. I have been looking around to no avail for a function to limit these numbers and only show maybe 4 with intervals of 100.

There are major, medium and minor ticks - major ticks usually have tick labels. So what you are looking for is probably a scale with 5 major ticks at 0, 100, 200, 300, 400 - maybe medium ticks at 50, 150, 250, 350 and a reasonable number of minor ticks for the remaining multiples of 10 - but this is what you should get from the scale engine, when you use setAxisMaxMajor/setAxisMaxMinor with the right parameters.

If you really need to suppress tick labels you can overload QwtScaleDraw::label() returning QString::null for certain values or you could increase the minor/medium tick length to the same size as the major ticks using QwtScaleDraw::setTickLength(). But both are hacks - only do this, when there is really no way so that the scale engine returns, what you need.

Last but not least note, that you can assign all ticks manually using QwtPlot::setAxisScaleDiv().

Uwe

[ldg20]

Thank you Uwe for responding.

I am usuing Qwt 5.0

I think pictures will explain best.

My graph is a sliding window of x,y values. The sliding window first begins showing the values 0 - 400 of x, then 1 - 401, 2 - 402 and so on.

This is what I had. Notice the autoscaler seems to cut off values in the beginning and leaves room at the end for values not yet in the attatched data.
Screenshot from 2012-07-12 12:02:35.jpg

After the call to setAxisMaxMajor I get this. Note my only reason for that call is to limit the x window size to values that will be plotted. Maybe there is a better function to suite my needs without inflicting me with the problem of too many major x labels.
Screenshot from 2012-07-12 14:51:03.jpg


Thanks.

[Uwe]

Notice the autoscaler seems to cut off values in the beginning and leaves room at the end for values not yet in the attatched data.

To disable the alignment at the end of the axes:

plot->axisScaleEngine( QwtPlot::xBottom )->setAttribute( QwtScaleEngine::Floating, true );

plot->axisScaleEngine( QwtPlot::xBottom )->setAttribute( QwtScaleEngine::Floating, true );

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You might also want to set do the following, for the situation when the tick labels are close to the borders:

plot->plotLayout()->setAlignCanvasToScales( true );

plot->plotLayout()->setAlignCanvasToScales( true );

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But I still didn't get what you mean by "cut off values in the beginning": what is the bounding rectangle of the 400 points and what ranges on the scales do you want to display ?

Note that in your case auto scaling is not of much interest as you could simply do the following:

int startIndex = ...
plot->setAxisScale( QwtPlot::xBottom, points[ startIndex ].x(), points[ startIndex + 400 ].x(), );

int startIndex = ...
plot->setAxisScale( QwtPlot::xBottom, points[ startIndex ].x(), points[ startIndex + 400 ].x(), );

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Uwe

[ldg20]

Thanks for all the help Uwe.

plot->axisScaleEngine( QwtPlot::xBottom )->setAttribute( QwtScaleEngine::Floating, true );

was exactly what I needed.

I have another question now. Is the QwtPlot double buffered? My plot is very data intensive and I'm just looking for ways now to make it more fluid and easy to look at. Any ideas? Thanks again!

[Uwe]

I have another question now. Is the QwtPlot double buffered?

In the default configuration it is triple buffered. Double buffering is already done by Qt for any widget and the 3rd buffer avoids replots in combination with overlays ( f.e the rubberband of the zoomer ). You can disable both buffers, but beside for live plots I don't see any good reason why.

My plot is very data intensive and I'm just looking for ways now to make it more fluid and easy to look at.

I'm always surprised that almost every library dealing with graphics gets advertised as "high performant" while IMO such a statement is completely pointless without the specific usecase. Qwt offers several optimizations ( or workarounds for Qt bottlenecks ) and algorithms, but it's up to you to combine them to a performant plot application. ( F.e you can ruin any performance of a plot widget by using 10000 markers instead of a curve with 10000 points ).

If the buffering of QwtPlot makes an application more or less fluid depends on the type of plot you want to implement. But in data intensive applications its more about the question how to reduce what needs to be painted - the performance of painting itself is less important. How to do this depends on your requirements and the characteristics of your data - often you end with a combination of point weeding and polygon clipping. Check the archive of this forum for "levels of detail".

Uwe

PS: Note that Qwt from SVN trunk reintroduces several optimizations that were gone in Qwt 6.0.