SciChart WPF v8 has been released and brings some exciting enhancements to the SciChart WPF 2D & 3D Chart control suite! We outline the main enhancements and features below.

Reworked Positioning of Axis Labels and Titles in SciChart 3D

Totally reworked positioning of Axis Labels and Axis Titles in SciChart 3D in order to provide better experience and resolve cases of labels and titles overlapping.

Configurable Orientation for Axis Labels and Titles in SciChart 3D

Added the AxisTitleOrientation and TickLabelOrientation properties to the Axis3D class. They allow to specify desired orientation for the Axis Title and Axis Labels: Auto, Horizontal, Vertical (Vertical is not available for Axis Labels).

Added Styling for Axis Titles in SciChart 3D

In earlier versions of SciChart 3D, Axis Title could not be styled separately from Axis Labels. Now, styling of Axis3D Titles is supported via the TitleStyle property in the Axis3D class. A custom Style with TargetType=”TextBlock” should be provided for styling the Axis Title. At the moment, styling options are limited to FontFamily, FontSize and Foreground settings.

Configurable 3D Axis Cube

Axis Cube Planes can be hidden via the AxisPlanes API, which is represented by three static classes ZxAxisPlane, XyAxisPlane, ZyAxisPlane in SciChart.Charting3D.Visuals.AxisLabels namespace. The classes define AxisPlaneVisibilityMode and IsPlaneVisible attached properties. They allow configuring visibility for individual planes of the 3D Axis Cube by specifying whether an Axis Plane should appear by setting the IsPlaneVisible property and also choosing the visible side of the Axis Plane via the AxisPlaneVisibilityMode property.

New VisualXcceleratorEngine API in SciChart 2D

Added API to manually control VisualXccelerator Engine. It does all drawing when VisualXccelerator renderer (hardware-accelerated renderer) is used.

The new API allows for improving startup speed of applications that use SciChart with VisualXccelerator renderer and provides more control over the Engine life time. Specifically, it is possible to start/restart the engine, choose when to stop it and inspect its status and configuration options during the runtime.

Multi-Threading Support for the VisualXccelerator Renderer

The VisualXccelerator renderer now supports multiple UI threads. We reworked SciChart API on the C# side that was used to control the VisualXccelerator Engine, adding appropriate synchronization mechanisms and thus allowing multi-threaded rendering. However, please note that underlying VisualXccelerator Engine works in synchronous manner and rendering is still synchronous in the SciChart native code.

Multiple Application Domains Support for the VisualXccelerator Renderer

Before SciChart v8, VisualXccelerator Engine that is used for SciChart 3D and hardware-accelerated rendering in SciChart 2D did not allow being shared across multiple Application Domains. Since SciChart v8, the engine allows being used in an application that utilizes multiple Application Domains approach.

Improved Text Drawing API

Added a new method to the IRenderContext2D API. It provides the means for measuring text size for the particualr renderer in use. The method should be used together with the IRenderContext2D.DrawText(Point, string, float, FontFamily, FontWeight, FontStyle, Color) method to find the size of a text and determine whether it should be drawn of not.

Key Bindings for ChartModifiers

Added the ExecuteWhen property to ChartModifiers that allows specifying a key modifier. When the key is pressed, ChartModifier will be enabled to execute its action.

Added New Examples and Documentation Articles

Updated look and feel of the SciChart Examples Demo App, added new examples to the Sandbox and new set of tutorials to the documentation.

Multiple other minor features, bug fixes and enhancements

We've fixed a number of bugs and added minor improvements to the library.

More details can be found in the full release note at scichart.com/scichart-wpf-v8-0-released