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Spotfire Ideas Portal
Status Implemented
Product Spotfire
Categories Visualization
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 30, 2016

Combo Chart: Improved Y-Axis Labels Values with Multiple Scales

When using a combo chart with multiple Y-axes, the auto scaled values used for the major tick-marks/grid lines are typically poor choices for both axes. Since I can't insert a picture here, I'll describe:

Left Y Axis Labels/Tick marks: -40, 51, 142, 233, 324

Right Y Axis Labels/Tick marks: -31%, 40%, 110%, 181%, 252%

If I share the above chart with any engineers that I work with, they won't actually look at the chart and they will instead complain/laugh about my scale labels :)

The reason for this odd choice in labels seems to be that it places a high priority on making both axes share the same gridlines.  I would happily forgo the option of grid lines for one or both axes in exchange for a more reasonable set of auto scaled axis labels.  In the situation above, the following values would be preferred:

if different number of labels were allowed on each axis:

Left: 0, 100, 200, 300, 400

Right: -50%, 0, 50%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%, 300%

if the drawing engine made it too difficult to do differing number of labels, then:

Left: Same as above

Right: -100%, 0%, 100%, 200%, 300%

In some situations, you can manually set each axis' max and min and force the labels to be reasonable but as soon as the data changes (due to filtering or updated data) the ranges need to be revisited.

This idea is somewhat related to another existing idea regarding Combo Charts with multiple Y axes (http://spotfireideas.tibco.com/ideas/SPF-I-263). This linked item I would say is more important but if that one is fixed, the problem described in this issue will probably take the focus as a major issue with the combo chart implementation. I would hope that it would be addressed at the same time as the linked issue.

Implemented in 10.9
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