3.2. Customize Charts

To customize a chart, choose File->Properies in the chart window menu. The following dialog pops up:

Figure 3-2. Chart properties dialog.

The main elements in this dialog are:

The graph hierarchy tree.

The graph hierarchy tree (top left) displays the current graph components and their hierarchy. The hierarchy can be modified using the buttons just below it.

The graph preview.

The graph preview (top right) shows the result of the modifications and displays a scaled version of the graph you will get when you apply the changes.

The Add button.

The Add button allows for insertion of new components into the hierarchy. Note that the list of available components to add depends on the object selected.

The arrow buttons.

The arrow buttons can be used to modify the order of child objects of the same parent. These buttons are only available when ordering makes sense for the currently selected object. If you have, say, two charts in the graph, you can change the order in the hierarchy, and this will affect the order in which they are displayed.

The Delete button.

Clicking the Delete button destroys the selected graph component and all its children. The button is not available when the component can't be removed.

Warning

These deletions can't be undone, so be careful.

The component properties notebook.

The component properties notebook (bottom) shows all the properties you can set for the current component.

Warning

The window title can't be changed, so if you customize a pre-defined chart, the title may no longer reflect what is displayed in the window.

GChemTable does not check the validity of the charts. It is possible add titles and labels not corresponding to the data actually used, in which case the resulting charts will not make sense.

Some features appearing in the dialog, such as error bars are not currently supported by GChemTable.