Bars

In the Gantt chart of VARCHART XGantt, you can represent your data, dates, durations and degrees of completion graphically by bars, symbols or bitmaps. This animated picture shows a completion bar.

Bars may or may not overlap. If bars overlap, the underlying one is supposed to hide. VARCHART XGantt can make it visible: This animated picture demonstrates how an overlap layer comes into existence as soon as two layers meet, and how by its varying length the overlap layer indicates the size of the section overlapping.

Bars can be labelled. To generate different shapes and colors of bars, these features are based on data, and filters and maps can be applied to select bars and allocate graphical features.

VARCHART Gantt diagrams offer a variety of options to position annotations on bars. You can place them at the top, at the bottom, at the beginning or at the end of a bar, outside or inside of it. Even symbols and pictures can be added to an annotation. This animated picture demonstrates selected positions of annotations on a bar.

In a Gantt chart you can visualize dependencies between activities by links. This animated picture demonstrates a start-start link and a finsh-start link and some of their graphical customizing options.

Grouped Layout

Arrange activities or orders in your Gantt chart by grouping them using data fields. Even multi-level grouping is a snap. Summarize groups using group titles and summary bars. Sort groups and their activities by any criteria. Collapse groups to display the activities of a group in a single line in order to save space.

This animated picture displays the summary bar's adaptation in size while an activity of the group is moved.

This animated picture shows how to collapse groups in the best way. Collapsing congests the bars of a group to a single row. When a group is collapsed, bars may overlap and hide some of their information. Alternatively, optimized collapsing can be chosen, that displays overlapping nodes in a second row and thus avoids hiding information.

Hierarchical Layout

Use VARCHART XGantt's hierarchical layout option to display activities/orders using a structured code field from your data. Levels are automatically indented, and can be expanded/collapsed with a simple click of the mouse.

This animated picture demonstrates collapsing and expanding the second and third level by clicking on the hierarchy symbols in the table.

In a Gantt chart, activities aggregated in a hierarchy or in a group can have a summary bar on each level. If activities are modified, the summary bars will adapt automatically. The dates calculated can be accessed. This animated picture displays the summary bar's adaptation in size while an activity of the group is moved.

Save space by collapsing non-working sections, e.g. the third shift if only two shifts are needed.

Calendar Grid

Visualise non-working intervals with VARCHART XGantt's powerful and unique calendar grid. A different calendar can even be assigned to each group or even to each activity of a Gantt chart. It then shows the individual time pattern of working and non-working periods of the group or activity. This animated picture shows calendars assigned to a whole chart and to single groups.

A calendar grid can be collapsed. You can view the chart with or without the grid by a single mouse click. This animated picture demonstrates collapsing and expanding the grid.

Table

Adapt the columns of the table in your Gantt chart exactly to your needs. Use maps and filters to assign various backgrounds, fonts, and colors based on your data.

Multi-line tables also contribute to adapt a chart exactly to your customer's needs. This animated picture demonstrates, how line breaks can reduce the width of the table (if space is limited) and thus can allow to display the details of bars in the Gantt graph on the right.

Another way to re-distribute space from the horizontal to the vertical direction in a table is to place the content of several data fields into a single cell. Please see this animated picture for an example.

Histogram

VARCHART XGantt allows to display workload and capacity by a histogram that automatically adapts to your current planning situation. Quickly display current work load and available capacities. Overloads and subloads can be shown in several different ways. Different capacities can be graphically displayed all at once in several histograms, or by stacked curves in different colors/patterns in the same histogram. Availabilities and capacities can be updated interactively.

This animated picture demonstrates how an added resource (yellow bar) automatically adds to the established work load in the histogram.

This animated picture shows work overload bars in a histogram. A capacity curve indicates the maximum workload of a system. Values above the curve are overload values. In the histogram, overload bars can be marked dynamically, for example by a hatching pattern or a different color. They indicate immediately a critical situation in a system.

Before scheduling

After scheduling

Leaflet (PDF file 0.2 MB)

Resource Scheduling

The Resource Scheduling module of VARCHART XGantt supports the conception of interactive decision making. It unifies both, generating schedules automatically after pre-defined strategies and taking individual constraints into account. The latter can be edited interactively and graphically in the Gantt chart; there is no need to define complicated rules in advance. Recalculations continuously include the individual settings. If, for example, problems occur due to failures or breakdowns, and changes become necessary, different scenarios can be tried and their impact on delivery dates can be tested. Complying with binding delivery dates requires knowledge on the workload of a resource already in preliminary stages.

Interactive decision making combines human skills and computer abilities to find the appropriate balance of customer fulfilment and of optimized and consistent workload for your resources. A fast perception of conflicts in a schedule enables the planning staff to handle situations flexibly, even those for which the system does not provide precise solutions.

There is a smooth transition from manual to automatic scheduling, depending on the requirements of the situation. It increases the stability of schedules and provides flexibility where required by the planning staff.

This animated picture shows different settings for the scheduling procedure: The job quantity is increased, which leads to an extension of the processing time, which can be counteracted by an increase of of the resource capacity.

This animated picture shows how the tasks behave when the planning strategies "As Soon As Possible" or, alternatively "Just In Time" apply with the capacity of the resources varying. The larger the capacity of the resources, the more jobs can be scheduled simultaneously. The lower the capacity of the resources, the more jobs are put in a chronological sequence.

This animated picture shows how two resources are assigned to a job (job 1 uses resource A and Resource B). A breakdown of resource B causes the jobs to be rescheduled.

• Display tooltip texts from the application data
• Interactively move the date line or the timenow line
• Set and interactively adjust diagram sections for the table, the Gantt graph and the histogram.
• Scroll diagram sections independently
• Enlarge diagram sections continuously
  

…for Data Editing

Give your customers the ability to edit their data quickly and easily, while at the same time controlling which fields can be changed and which are "readonly". As the developer, you can take advantage of the many events provided by VARCHART XGantt to react to each user action as you deem appropriate. No Gantt tool gives you more power to interact with the user.

• Move activities or tasks by dragging them with the mouse
• Change the dates of one or a selection of activities/tasks by moving them horizontally
• Move activities vertically between groups, for example a task to a different machine
• Move activities or tasks via OLE Drag & Drop into to a different diagram, even of a different application
• Create or delete activities/tasks or links
• Open a Data Edit dialog via double-click
• In-place editing of data in the fields of the table. You may insert a combo-box or a date picker of your own into the table cells
• A number of interactions can be performed via the keyboard, such as creating or deleting activities or by-field-navigating in the table.

Easy and Fast Integration

The integration of VARCHART XGantt into your application is so easy that you will be able to see your first Gantt chart from your data within minutes. You can transfer the data to be graphically displayed via the application programming interface (API) or via a CSV file to the VARCHART XGantt control. At design time, you have the power to tell VARCHART XGantt the structure and format of your data via simple entries on the Custom Property page. Data fields can even be added or deleted at runtime, too.

Application Specific Configuration via Property Pages or API

The graphical layout of your Gantt application can be configured with the help of property pages. Supplemental dialog boxes offer even more functionality and control. All settings you make at design time persist in the Structured Storage for ActiveX and .NET controls. They can be exported to or imported from file.

Most settings can be changed at run time via the API. You also can allow the end user to modify them. Our knowledgeable support team is ready to help you with any questions you may have. We are dedicated to ensuring that the integration of VARCHART XGantt into your application is completely successful.

Support of Unicode

From version 3.1 onward, VARCHART XGantt supports Unicode. The character sets of all languages can be used simultaneously and independently of the operating system that the application is run on.

Localising Your Gantt Chart

VARCHART XGantt supports localising your application in any language. All characters in the time scale, in the legend, in column titles of the table, in context menues, in tooltips or in dialogs that pop up at runtime can be adapted to the desired language via the API.

Printing and Presentation - A Complete Solution

Offer your customers extraordinary printing functionality. Let them present their planning results on paper, or online, with polish and professionalism. VARCHART XGantt provides full Print Preview functionality and gives you control over all kinds of print layout features:

• which parts of the diagram are to be repeated on each page
  
• the paper format (size, margins...)
  
• how to fit the diagram on the most efficient number of pages
  
• how to export a diagram in order to embed it e.g. in a PowerPoint presentation
  

• Operating system Windows NT/2000/XP
  
• Development environment that supports the integration of ActiveX or .NET controls, e.g. Visual Basic/VBA, Visual C++, C#, Progress, Delphi, PowerBuilder, Centura or HTML using VBScript and others.