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How to: Create a Circular Gauge (Design-time)

  • 3 minutes to read

This is the first tutorial of the XtraGauges Getting Started series. It will guide you through the process of creating a Circular gauge and adjusting its common settings.

This tutorial consists of the following steps.

  1. Create a New Project and Add a Gauge Control
  2. Run the Preset Manager
  3. Load the Required Gauge Preset
  4. Customize Gauge Scales
  5. Result

#Step 1. Create a New Project and Add a Gauge Control

In this step, we will perform the common actions required when you add a Gauge control to your application.

  • Create a new Windows Forms Application project in Visual Studio or open an existing one.
  • Add the GaugeControl component to your project. To do this, locate the GaugeControl item in the Visual Studio toolbox on the DX.24.2: Data & Analytics tab and drop it onto the form.

    Lesson - Drag and drop gauge

#Step 2. Run the Preset Manager

The Preset Manager allows you to apply built-in presets to your existing gauges or create a new gauge from the selected preset.

  • Locate the Gauge’s smart tag and click Run Preset Manager.

    Lesson - Run Preset Manager

After that, you will see the following wizard.

Lesson-Preset Manager

Note that after you drop the Gauge in the previous step, the Gauge Preset Manager may be invoked automatically (if its “Show the preset manager every time a new Gauge control is dropped onto the form” option is enabled).

#Step 3. Load the Required Gauge Preset

  • In the Preset Manager, click CircularFull to display presets with circular gauges.

    You can load the gauge preset in one of two ways:

    • double-click the required preset on the Preset Manager;
    • select a preset and click the Load button at the bottom of the Preset Manager.

The following image shows how to load the Deep Fire preset using the second approach.

Lesson - Deep Fire preset

The Form1 window should look like the following.

Lesson - Deep Fire Gauge

The new gauge contains two scales, a needle, spindle cap and background layer.

#Step 4. Customize Gauge Scales

  • To access the gauge’s elements and customize their settings, run the Visual Gauge Control Designer.
  • For this, locate the Gauge’s smart tag and in the invoked menu, click Customize Gauge Control, as shown below.

    Lesson - Customize Gauge Control

  • Let’s delete the inner scale. For this, select the second scale in the Gauge Designer, by clicking the scale2 node, and remove it using the Remove button.

    Lesson - Gauge Designer

  • To customize the scale settings, double-click the scale gauge element on the right side list of the Visual Gauge Control Designer or click the scale’s smart tag and select Run Designer as shown below.

    Lesson - Run Designer

  • Change the Scale’s properties in Scales - Element Designer and click the Ranges… button as shown below.

    Lesson - Scale Settings

This runs the Ranges editor.

  • Let’s add a range to the gauge scale to show the working range of the needle element. For this, click the Add button in the Scale Ranges editor.

    Lesson -  Scale Ranges Editor

  • For a Range element, customize its color and set the BaseRange.EndValue property to 12 and BaseRange.ShapeOffset to -50, then click OK as shown below.

    Lesson - Customize the Scale Range

  • Click OK to close the Scale Ranges editor.
  • Click OK to close Scales - Element Designer.

Then, you will see the following confirmation window.

Lesson_GaugeDesignerConfirmation

Note

The confirmation window occurs in the Gauge Designer every time the current layout is changed.

  • Click Yes to confirm operation, as shown above.
  • Click OK to close the Visual Gauge Control Designer.

#Step 5. Result

Run the application to see the result.

Lesson - Result