Corel Chart

In some ways, Chart is more impressive than Draw.  As a charting program, it is
strictly an accessory -- but the three-D effects in Chart are more elegant than
their equivalents in Draw, and one could wish that Corel Corp. would make this the next across-the-board feature.

As charting programs go, Corel Chart is kind of middle-of-the-road.  It lacks 
some of the more specialized chart types (e. g., polar charts) -- but these are
specialty items.  If you need that kind of chart, you need something like Delta Graph.  Data entry is somewhat the same: Corel Chart has a fairly powerful spreadsheet-like data handler, and it can take data from standard spreadsheets like Excel or 123.  If you need more data-handling, then you need a more advanced program.  For most business needs, even most scientific needs, Corel Chart is more than adequate.  If you are a designer with clients to serve, you will normally find Corel Chart gives you tools to keep them happy.

If you're not an old chart-making hand, let Corel Chart do most of the work.  Open a new chart with sample data.  Click on the data-grid tool (at the top of the fixed-position toolbar); edit the sample data to fit your needs.  Click the same spot on the toolbar again, and you are back to your chart.

More adventurous chart-makers -- or those who have to use data from client-supplied spreadsheets, will like the Autoscan feature.  Switch to the data grid as before, import the data and select the area you want to chart.  Click the autoscan button at the top of the screen and Chart will see if it can determine what is a data range and so on.  If that doesn't work, things are still fairly simple: Mark the various areas, and use the pull-down list adjacent to the autoscan button to >tell< Chart what's what.

What's really >fun< in Chart, though, is the range of special effects.  Go easy on these -- you wouldn't want the images to be so riveting that people don't hear the presentation (especially if you are the presenter...?).  But do try the various three-D options.  A bar chart, done powerfully in three dimensions can make a case; it can even make miserable data look appealing.  It is, in short, sheer sizzle.  Three-D effects are controled from a single rollup.  Rotation and depth, position, size and perspective are all controlled from pushbutton choices.  The changes are previewed on the fly using a wireframe.  Press the redraw button in the roll-up and the chart segment is rendered to screen.  It is >very< fast rendering, too.

Color choices are pretty straightforward.  The entire available palette is displayed on-screen at the bottom of the Chart window,  Pick a chart element to change; pick the color you want; the job is done.

About the only thing that is not lovable about this chartmaker is its pie charts. I like pie charts; I use them a lot in my own presentations.  Corel Chart simply doesn't make pie charts that I like.  It's almost as if, having made all sorts of truly elegant three-D charting possible, someone said, Whoops! we left out pie charts and we'd gotta do something fast.  These pie charts can be three-D -- barely, and without the elegance of the three-D capabilities of the >real< three-D charts.  Chart values are stuck on "whiskers," and they admit of only limited modification.  Pie segments can be exploded only within the limits of the dialogues "small/medium/large" approach, and segments cannot be "grown."  

In short, this is not an elegant pie-chart maker, and that is surprising, because the rest of the program works very well (unlike it's 3.0 predecessor, which had a disturbing habit of dying).

Corel Chart makes files that can be passed to other Corel modules -- Draw, Move and Show, in particular.