excel should show 4 dimensional charts

S

Stephen Frith

For several years I have had an idea for an exciting development to charting
in general, and specifically applying it to excel. I have often thought of
writing a plug-in but have finally accepted that I will never get around to
it so I throw the idea into the community for someone else to run with:

The idea is straight-forward; create another dimension to the ranges
selected for a chart (time being the most obvious but any dimension would
work) and create multiple instances of the original two or three dimensional
chart, using the exact smae formatting. Then, when viewing, have a 'play'
button that animates the chart by refreshing the sequence.

A practical example would be to set up a two dimensional bar chart showing
sales by team for a given month. The full twelve months of data could then
be selected as the 'dynamic' range so that when 'play chart' is selected, the
graph flicks through all twleve months giving an animated view of shifting
perfomance throughout the year.

Many examples can be explored - rainfall by country by month; population by
country by year etc. etc.

The key is to draw the chart once, then select the additonal data that is in
the same shape for multiple, underlaying charts.

And of course to develop the necessary langauge to describe the new feature:
'Dynamic charting, animated charts, 4 dimensional charts' etc. etc.

I look forward to importing just such a chart into a powerpoint presentation
in the near future.

Many thanks and good luck



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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...b624632ef2&dg=microsoft.public.excel.charting
 
J

Jon Peltier

This can be done readily, using just one chart instead of many, using dynamic ranges
that are changed by a timer in VBA. It's often used with stock data to show a moving
year of price data. I've done project that use this technique, but I have nothing
ready for a quick example, and Google has let me down.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______
 

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