[santra]

If a bar is, say, 20 units high, and I want to decrease the height to 14 units, MUST I first drag the upper right hand corner down to 14, and then the upper left hand corner down to 14? There's got to be a better way. Seriously, I'm getting sick of having move through a trapezoid shape just to shorten the height of a rectangular bar.

Also, if I'm moving a bar to a different area of the chart, how do I get it to "lock" to the baseline? Does this app not yet have "snap to grid"? It at least should have that for the baseline of charts.

Still very confused about the app: is it just extremely limited, or do I need to RTFM?

Any help appreciated. I just got this and am struggling to learn how to use it. It seems like a great SIMPLE tool that could be very useful. If only...

[dave_m]

Sandy, it sounds like you're drawing bars by outlining them with lines and points. No wonder you're frustrated.

If you take a look at the "Books" sample graph, and inspect one of the bars there, you can see that bars are actually a built-in point type - just create a point and then use the info popover to change its type to a horizontal bar or a vertical one.

Once a point is a bar, you can move it longitudinally by grabbing it at the "value" end, and laterally by grabbing it anywhere else. I hope this helps!

[santra]

Dave, thanks. This is a good start. But I'm still not there yet.

1. Tap the line icon
2. Tap to make a point on the bottom axis where I want the bar to start.
3. Tap and Hold the point to shrink it from a circle to an actual point.
4. Tap the Inspector to get the Point Style control panel.
5. Tap the Bar icon to change the point into a bar.
6. Dismiss the Inspector menu.

Now what? You suggested I "move it longitudinally by grabbing it at the "value" end"—but it has little or no height now, and consequently I can't grab onto anything. If I tap on it to select it, that immediately deletes it! It seems the only way to do this is to first set a small (arbitrary) height value in the inspector before dismissing it, in order for the object to have some height to grab onto. Is that the missing step?

Originally Posted by dave_m

Sandy, it sounds like you're drawing bars by outlining them with lines and points. No wonder you're frustrated.

If you take a look at the "Books" sample graph, and inspect one of the bars there, you can see that bars are actually a built-in point type - just create a point and then use the info popover to change its type to a horizontal bar or a vertical one.

Once a point is a bar, you can move it longitudinally by grabbing it at the "value" end, and laterally by grabbing it anywhere else. I hope this helps!

[dave_m]

Now what? You suggested I "move it longitudinally by grabbing it at the "value" end"—but it has little or no height now, and consequently I can't grab onto anything. If I tap on it to select it, that immediately deletes it! It seems the only way to do this is to first set a small (arbitrary) height value in the inspector before dismissing it, in order for the object to have some height to grab onto. Is that the missing step?

Hmm, sorry for the continued trouble!

Why not create the point where you want the bar to eventually reside, rather than creating a point on the axis and trying to drag it out? You're right though, a bar point on the axis is impossible to select - I'll add an entry to the bug tracking database so that we can adjust this.

[santra]

Perfect! Thank you!

Originally Posted by dave_m

Why not create the point where you want the bar to eventually reside?