Ellipses
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Ellipses are especially useful for a gauge's basic shape.  Multiple ellipses around a gauge can create a three-dimensional ring around the gauge.  Like many other objects, ellipses use a brush and pen.


The ellipse can be edited in the properties window with three different values:



PROPERTY REFERENCE


Center Point

This represents where you want the center of the object to be located.  To select a center point, you can either enter in the coordinates (see coordinate plane for more information about these coordinates) or you can click the box (which appears once you click inside where you would enter coordinates).  When you click this box, you can set your mouse on the point you would like and click.

Horizontal Radius

This is the horizontal length of the radius in percentage of the screen.  The radius is the length from the center point to the edge of the ellipse.  Therefore, the length of the entire ellipse is twice the length of the radius (from one edge to the center point to the other edge).  If, for example, you would like your ellipse to be half the length of the application window, set your horizontal radius to 25.  This means that from one edge of the ellipse to the center is 25%, or 1/4, of the screen.  So from one edge to the other it will be 50%, or half, of the screen.

Vertical Radius

This is the vertical length of the radius in percentage of the screen.  The same rules apply to this radius as the horizontal radius, which is explained above.



All of these values combined determine the shape and location of the ellipse on the dashboard.


For detailed examples of ellipses used for gauges, see the Example Gauges section.