Choosing an attractive linear scale for a graph's Y Axis

Question

I\'m writing a bit of code to display a bar (or line) graph in our software. Everything\'s going fine. The thing that\'s got me stumped is labeling the Y axis.

The

Answer 1

Try this code. I've used it in a few charting scenarios and it works well. It's pretty fast too.

public static class AxisUtil
{
    public static float CalculateStepSize(float range, float targetSteps)
    {
        // calculate an initial guess at step size
        float tempStep = range/targetSteps;

        // get the magnitude of the step size
        float mag = (float)Math.Floor(Math.Log10(tempStep));
        float magPow = (float)Math.Pow(10, mag);

        // calculate most significant digit of the new step size
        float magMsd = (int)(tempStep/magPow + 0.5);

        // promote the MSD to either 1, 2, or 5
        if (magMsd > 5.0)
            magMsd = 10.0f;
        else if (magMsd > 2.0)
            magMsd = 5.0f;
        else if (magMsd > 1.0)
            magMsd = 2.0f;

        return magMsd*magPow;
    }
}