I developed 3D Chart Control as part of one of my freelance projects. (I retained the rights to freely use and distribute the code, which is why I can post it here.)

3D Chart Control addressed the requirement for a chart to monitor and display extremely fast data acquisition operations in real time. In 1998, one of the fastest processors available was the Pentium 233 MMX, so hardware performance was a serious challenge.

I developed 3D Chart Control using Visual C 5.0. Because performance was the top priority, I did not use any COM-related technology, including OCX.

I sub-classed a button control and a windows control class, and then extended it instead of using a standalone class. This lets programmers use resource editors to put this chart control on their dialog boxes and adjust its position and size.

I used mathematical equations and rules efficiently to avoid triangular functions. These functions place a relatively heavy load on the CPU during real-time operations.

The chart parameters are flexible and the chart is resizable on both X and Y axes.

Use the following link to download the chart. The zip file includes a sample application that shows you how to use 3D Chart Control.

Source code and sample application ( 72 Kb)

The following screenshot shows what 3D Chart Control looks like.