How would I draw a pie chart control in FactoryTalk?

Greetings!

I am a C#/C++ programmer who has never used FactoryTalk. My manager has come up with an idea for a display element that is basically a stack of three pie charts, with the size of each segment being controlled dynamically. According to him, FactoryTalk does not do circles very well, and it would be easier to create an ActiveX control in C++ (or C#, if it can create ActiveX controls). I don't believe him.

A quick glance through the available elements in FactoryTalk did not show me any pre-built pie chart controls. How would I go about creating a pie chart control in FactoryTalk, or should I just go ahead and develop the ActiveX control?

Our customer has FactoryTalk version 8.10.00 (CPR 9 SR 7.4).

Thank you very much.

Depending on the amount of resolution you need, you could try this:

Say you can live with a resolution of 5%. You could make 20 little slices and arrange them on the display so that they form a circle.

Then, use animation/visibility to turn them on based on some value in your logic.

Clunkly but it might work. Especially because nobody looks at a pie chart to get fine detail. You could probably live with only 10 segments.

You might try looking at fill animation also. I've never thought to use it in that manner, so it might not actually be possible. But other animations allow you to do things in either a linear or circular fashion, so animation is where I'd start looking, particularly in the "fill" section. Maybe you could come up with a clever combination of animations that would do the trick.

No ASF, there is no rotational based fill. This is FTView after all, the worst platform in existence. You can probably go ahead though and use the Microsoft Chart ActiveX control. It might work, or might crash View, and use VBA to populate and control it.

MSChart is the control, and the control itself is functional and stable as delivered from Microsoft; I have no idea if it will function correctly under FTrash View.