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Each study has a new grid selection on its property form to replace the check box list. The new grid object will show on the chart property form. The new grid control gives more flexibility in what kind of grid lines are displayed. The grid lines can be different colors, line thicknesses, and line styles. That kind of flexibility was not possible with the implementation in the old Ensign. If you see a sub-window such as #1 lacking the grid you like, go to the chart object list and see the listing of Grid for Window 1. Select it and configure it with the lines, styles, and line values you seek. It is more flexible than ever before. You can have different line styles and colors for each grid line now. And if you will scroll down in the documentation there are examples of colorful fills to give some cool effect for the grid. This new feature may need a bit of configuration for defaults you like because the defaults that show might not be what you expect. But I am showing where you can do some fixing to get it the way you like it. If the grid setting is what you want for the default, then check the Use as Default box before closing the grid form. The Grid button found on the study property will take you directly the Grid object property form to bypass getting the using the chart object list. Either way is ending up at the same place which is the object's property form. Let me begin demonstrating the grid using Stochastic study on a chart in a sub-window.
This chart shows Stochastic in the sub-window with a grid, which may or may not be what you like. Let's discover how to change the grid. Go to the Study property form for the Stochastic.
On this form is a button labeled Grid and a drop down selection box by it, labeled Default. This will select the Grid file for Default from the Grid object.... and to see what that setting might be, click the Grid button.
On this form are 11 lines, very similar to the Daily Price Lines tool, where you can set the value levels where you want lines, and change the line style and color for each line. Let me make some changes and then show the changes in the grid for sub-window 1.
To illustrate, a new line at 20% that is thicker and Red is now shown along with a new line at 80% in thicker green. These grid line values could also be exposed by making a selection in the Global column to put the values in GVs.
It takes, but the dotted line is affected by the bar spacing. So the wider your bar spacing, the more dotted it will be. There are 15 different selections on the Grid drop down list and I encourage you to investigate the visual effect of each. Some would be inappropriate grid values for use on some studies, because of the study range involved. Values based on percent will be placed at a percentage of the panel height, and that is basically what was available in the old Ensign. Now you have an added ability to have specific values, such as a grid for the CCI study at -200 and at 200. So go set up a tab on the grid form, select the tab to define, make selections for Value and enter a level field number of 200, etc. You can also enter a name for this tab in the edit box to the right of the Tab word. A good name for a CCI grid tab would be CCI, and this name will show on the grid drop down listing so it is easy to know which selection is for which effect.
Yes they can be any number.... that is part of the increased flexibility. Perhaps you want a percent based on Fib levels, and put in 61.8 as the value on one of the lines. Now lets discuss the effect when the study is on the chart, instead of in a sub-window.
For the class of studies that are based on a percent scale we can optionally show on the left side of the chart a percent scale. The studies of this type are Stochastic, Relative Strength, Directional Movement, and William's %R. A question we get is users see this left side scale that they did not see before. This scale ONLY shows when one of the above studies in on the chart AND the study grid selection is on the Default selection.
If the grid selection is on ANY other grid selection, the left side grid will not show. Go to the first study on the chart and change the Grid selection on the study property form to the None selection on the bottom of the grid drop down list. Then resave the template, chart or workspace involved so the change is remembered.
Some cool grid examples with the Gradient selection were shown in the class on grids given 3 months ago.
No, the grid will extend to the right side scale area. Some get the new Ensign and have some visual change in a sub-window grid that is not what they had before. Sorry, the former way you had a grid did not readily transfer to the new Ensign. You will have to do some manual changing to configure your grids in the new Ensign. One easy way to do so is to realize that each sub-window will now have a grid object that shows on the chart objects list.
Double click on a grid entry on the objects list to show the properties for the grid.
No al_gorithm it does not matter.
Here is the grid for the gradient in the sub-window image. You can try changing to a different tab, or check or uncheck lines, or edit values. If you want to start with a percent based grid, try the tab labeled 75%.
This is the setting for the 75% tab and its visual effect. If the sub-window you see has a different visual grid than what is wanted, go to the grid object for that sub-window and change it. To totally remove a grid, you can do it either of two ways. 1st way would be to uncheck the Show check boxes on the grid object for that sub-window. 2nd way would be to find the study that is the first to use the sub-window and change its Grid selection to None.
This 2nd way is a bit more efficient, and thus preferred. If you do not want any grid in the sub-window, change the study grid property to the None selection. This new grid is actually easier to work with once you realize the nature of the change. Previously if a user wanted to change the visual of a grid in a sub-window, they had to go find the study that owned the sub-window. Now it is easier to see the grid object on the chart objects list and go make the change directly on the object without having to find the study. The added visual for the gradient or colors does not take any extra CPU effort. A thin vertical stripe is prepared for the image, and this becomes a paintbrush that is used to fill the sub-window area. The paintbrush effect is created once upon the sub-window being opened, and then just used to repaint the strip of space on the right side of the chart as the chart image moves leftward. Whether the paintbrush had 3 dotted lines on a white background, or some complex shading, it still takes the identical amount of CPU effort to create the brush and paint the stripe as the chart moves leftward. So do not shy away from fancy grids just because you think it adds to CPU overhead.... it does not.
Press CTRL+P keys to display the chart properties. Check the Dots check box in the Grid Style frame to have the chart grid display dots as shown in this example. In the example, the chart background color it black and the Grid Lines color is white. The Grid frame in the old Ensign with its 19 check box choices at 5% intervals has been removed. And the space freed up was used to make the form cleaner looking. In its place is a new Grid button and list box. The example shows Default, but let me show a property form for Stochastic and show you the Grid object.
Here the selection list shows a grid named 70/30 has been selected and there are others on the list to choose from. The list will give 16 choices, one of which is None if you do not want a grid to show when this study is the host of a sub-window.
One of the studies that plots on a percent scale is on the chart and has a grid selection other than 'None'.
Excellent. Sorry that more flexibility can add a bit more complexity to have it set up as wanted. If you would like to see the definition for this grid selection, click the Grid button and it takes you to the Grid property form, which I will show next.
The names on the tabs at the bottom of the grid form are the names that show on the Grid list box on the study property form. So you pick the selection by a name that becomes familiar to you. And this brings up another major change in the study and tool property forms and that is the ability to rename all the tabs. So the 3rd tab is currently selected and currently named 70/30. Note that on the right hand side is an edit box also showing the name for the current tab.... ie it shows 70/30. If you want to change the name of the selected tab, simply type a new name in the edit box on the right side by the word Tab [ ]. It is that simple and really works well. Changes you make here, of course, will show on all study Grid list boxes.
Yes, mickey, renaming tabs is implemented for all property forms: Arrows, draw tools, notes, DYOs, studies, Daily Price Lines, Grids, etc. I sure like renaming tabs. I like it more than I thought I would. It is so much easier to remember what is where, such as in the names used for the Grid tabs. 80/20 or 70/30 or Pipe give me strong hints of what it looks like. This form is similar to the Daily Price Lines form in that you have a selection list for the type of grid line, a value, color, line style, markers, and label check boxes. Since you are familiar with Daily Price LIne forms, this Grid control should be a natural to be used. Let me show some of the cool new effects you can do with grids. I will change the selection to the Gradient tab.
This is one of the predefined selections that will install with the current version for you to learn from, like or change. The grid controls paints from the bottom to the top and so at the bottom I have selections for the Gradient Line style with a transition from White to Black. See the next to the last row with the Gradient line style. The 2nd color for the gradient is read from the next row. So it transitions from White at the 0 level to Black at the 100 level. The 100 is on the next row as well. On top of the gradient fill we then place solid lines in different shades of gray at 90, then 80, then 70, then on up to 10. These are listed as price values, and so they will work well with any study that plots on a 0 to 100 scale, such as stochastic does. The STO scale range is the 'price'.
Let me go to the Setup | Charts properties and uncheck the Show Chart Grid in Study Sub-windows to remove the vertical lines.
Do you like that sub-window grid? Of course, you can uncheck the horizontal lines at every 10 increment and have just the gradient fill if you so choose but the bands are kind of cool in my opinion. In the past, all this extra background color did have an impact on chart repainting speed, and also on creating line and marker artifacts as the studies drew in realtime. However, I have focused on those issues, particularly on the issue of charting speed, and the new Ensign will be significantly faster. So you can totally at liberty to have and use these complex grid fills and gradients without having to have any worry about CPU burden or memory impact. The lines color in their true colors without leaving any ghost color segments inspite of the complexity of the background coloring from the grid, or from highlights, or zone coloring.
Plain vanilla is identical in CPU burden. So whether it is plain or complex the process is the same and the CPU burden is identical.
This is the Pipe selection... kind of reminds me of a shiny round pipe with the 3-D surface higher in the center. Note the clean visual of the study plotted above the grid control below
For this Pipe visual, I used 2 gradients. Note the last two checked row, does a gradient fill from 0 in Black to 50 in white and then that row with the 50 does a gradient from 50 in white to 100 in black on the next row. If you want gradient from say 20 to 80 edit the 0 to be 20 and the 100 to be 80 which I can show for the sake of illustration.
I can feel the excitement building and we are sure to have some very cool grids used on charts in the future as you become accustomed to the flexibility of the new feature. Let me add two more gradients in different colors in the 0-20 and 80-100 zones
On this form you see the new gradients from 0 in Red to 20 in Black, and from 80 in Black to 100 in Green. Lots of possibilities here, and again I emphasize, there is no penalty for any performance for designing and using more complex grids in sub-windows....so enjoy them. On what I just did, if you wanted to design a new tab, but keep the Pipe as originally shown -- select the Pipe tab, click the Copy Tab button, and then click on the new tab to receive the copy. So you could click Pipe, click Copy Tab, click tab 12, and now tab 12 is selected and has copied the pipe settings. Now you can rename tab 12, and make changes to give yourself a variation of the pipe theme. Grid Object on Chart Objects List:
When you put on a study that opens a sub-window, the study becomes the Host for the sub-window, and it will automatically put a new Grid object on the chart objects list. The behavior is automatic unless the study had None selected in its Grid control on its property form. In the example chart objects list, note the presence of an entry 2nd from the bottom. It shows Grid Lines for Window 1. If you want to go directly to the grid control used in sub-window 1, you can do so by selecting this object. It is associated with the Stochastic study higher on the list, but you might have forgotten which study was the host controlling the grid in the sub-window. The same property form will show for the Grid object by getting there this way as by clicking the Grid button on the study property form. And you can change the grid tab and that will change the sub-window visual and update the grid selection on the host study that created this grid so it should be intuitive and easy to use. I think you will like it once you have used it. Now you might have 50 studies on the chart and they use 4 sub-windows. At most you will have 4 new Grid objects, one for each of the 4 sub-windows. So you DO not have 50 grid objects related to 50 studies. You have 4 grid objects associated with 4 sub-windows. You can also save the arrangement of studies and objects as a template and apply the template to the other chart.
In this visual, you now know how to do the grid for the stochastic sub-window, it is the Pipe grid example. But for the visual on the chart, I need to explain. None of the studies will make a grid object for the host chart. However, you can fake a grid control by putting on the Daily Price Lines object and that is what I did in this example, and it also leads me into the next point of program enhancement. Let me show the DPL property that did this cool visual
It is just the same double gradient as explained on the Grid control. We have a gradient from 0 in black on the 1st line to 50 in white on the 2nd row and then from 50 in white to 100 in black on the 3rd row. 1st and 2nd lines have the Gradient Line style selections. I used -0.02 on the 1st level and 101 on the 3rd row to try to overshoot a little bit because the tools normally draw on the chart with a little 5 pixel buffer at top and bottom so the grid labels will show in their entirety for those grid lines in the scale area. Don't let my little above and little below values through you off, I could have used 0 and 100 as described above.
Here is the Daily Price Lines with the studies turned off. The banding is a nice visual effect and it comes from the horizontal lines of the charts normal grid. Let me turn that of by unchecking the Horz Grid box on the chart property form.
Let me put the Horz back on and the studies back on for further discussion.
Here I have the grid lines on, studies on, and the Show Draw Tools off, and DPL is a draw tool so it is not drawing though still owned by the chart.
This is a better visual of the normal chart, and it is basically part of the B-Line template. There are 2 keltner channels that use a Fill marker, the outer Keltner fills with the darker gray and then on top of that the 2nd Keltner fills with a lighter gray to give you the colored bands on the chart. Now let me point out that the property to plot behind the bars is now a private chart property instead of a global one. The studies that are to plot on top of the bars will plot, so you now have much greater flexibility is layering the studies down to get the visual effect you seek. Let me show the DPL on again with its gradient and show the effect it has based on the position it occupies on the chart object list.
Here the DPL is on the top of the list and it is plotting behind, so the order sequence for the visual is grid goes down first, then the DPL, then the 2 Keltner channels, and you get the colored bands on top of the DPL gradient. Now let me move the DPL position in between the 2 keltner studies.
Now the outer keltner did its fill, but the DPL changes that fill with these gray color bands because of the XOR mode for the pen when it draws. This makes the outer band kind of different..... might be considered cool.... might be considered too busy.... you decide. I am just showing the visual effects that can be created. Now I will move the DPL to be after both Keltner channels.
Now both bands get a striping effect, and the striping is different colors because the area being filled was different to begin with.
Don't be confused, the DPL tool did not have those options checked, all it did was 2 gradient fills on the whole range. You could check those boxes for showing those values.... nothing was changed there.
Tony, they draw, but do so with XOR pen mode and it is the XOR that is giving the visual you see. The painting will continue to give the effect you see above... nothing will be obscured. Now I am not expecting you to use gradients on the chart, but I am just illustrating the visuals that can be achieved if you have an interest. One thing that should be observed is the clean image of the candles and other markers... they show as intended in spite of the complexity of the background. They will paint in the sequence order you have them on the chart objects list. One other side effect of the implementation of the plot behind or ahead of the bars, affected draw tools. They will now automatically extend into the future and thus we have removed the check box option on Setup | Charts to redraw tools at bar completion. Since the behavior is now automatic, the box was removed from that form. Last modified 8/9/08 1:45 PM |
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