How to improve rendering of scatter charts

**marciopf** · 07-10-2014, 08:58 AM

Hello!

I'm plotting some scatter charts with many data (often 10k+ data points).
The displaying of the charts is rather slow (I can see the points being rendered through some seconds).

Is there a way to optimize the rendering of the charts?

Displaying less data is not an option (neither buying a better laptop ;-))

cheers,
Márcio

**MrShorty** · 07-10-2014, 10:27 AM

Jon Peltier has explored some of this issue, and you may find it interesting (http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/exc...nce-revisited/). Your profile indicates you are using 2010, and he links to a similar page in the comments of this blog entry to a similar essay regarding 2010. Commenters also suggest that using + or X for markers may speed up chart drawing.

You could try turning automatic calculation off to manual so that you can control when Excel executes a calculation/redraw event.

I don't know if this will help, but you could conceivably reduce the size of the plotted data series until just before publication. Then, right before you need the final version, you could extend the data series definitions to include all data.

In some ways, with 10k+ data points, there may not be a good way to speed things up.