The Report Designer allows you to create and edit page-based Report Templates which can generate output from your Projects in all sorts of advanced and powerful ways. This section of Help covers a wide range of topics to transform your Project data into meaningful insights.
Your report templates contain 'controls', like TextBox, Table, List etc, which can display hardcoded values, e.g. a title or label, or they can display values provided by a dataset. Your reports in Stardraw Design 7.4 will commonly use data provided by the Products, Cables, Project and Drawing datasets.
The datasets contain Attribute values and, potentially, other data entered in your project so, for example, the Products dataset contains the values entered for all of the Attributes belonging to all of the Products in your Project.
Certain controls in your report template deliver data regions; these enumerate the members of the dataset and return values as required. The controls that deliver data regions are Table, Tablix, List and Banded List so if, for example, you bind a Table to the Products dataset, it will return a row for each Product in your Project and the columns in that Table can return the value of any Attribute belonging to the Product.
Data regions allow you to manage data, e.g.
The controls in your report also allow you to operate on data in very powerful ways e.g.
In short, Reporting lets you analyse and present the data stored in your project in almost any way imaginable.
The Report Designer interface consists of the following regions:
By default on the left of your screen, the Reports Browser shows report templates provided by Stardraw Design 7.4 under the Stardraw Reports root, and user-defined report templates under My Reports. Select any report template to open it for editing in the Report Designer.
You cannot save changes to the default Stardraw Reports so, if you want to use a modified version of a Stardraw Report template you should choose Reports | Save As and save the modified template so that it appears under My Reports.
Initially hidden behind the Reports Browser tab, the Toolbar contains the objects used to create report templates.
Displayed on the right of your screen, the Report Explorer displays the hierarchy of objects in the report template and, additionally, gives access to data sources, parameters, embedded images, embedded stylesheets, and common values, e.g. "page number" for use in the report.
Click on an object listed in the Document Outline branch to select it in the Designer view. If you click on an object in the Designer to select it, it will be highlighted in the Report Explorer.
In the Report Explorer, objects are identified by and display their "Name" property. Objects are given a default Name e.g. TextBox1, TextBox2 etc, when they are created but in the example shown here each object has been edited to have a Name that denotes its purpose, for ease of identification when editing the report template.
Located by default behind the Report Explorer, the Layers control lets you add or remove layers and send the Layer back or bring it to the front. You can edit or customize any element only in the layer in which it was added.
The Property Grid is located on the lower right-hand side of your screen and displays the properties of the selected report element. If more than one element is selected, only their common properties are shown.
Use the Property Grid to set values for individual properties of the selected object(s) or to open the Property Dialog, using the blue link, for the selected object; the Property Dialog offers additional ways to define the behavior of objects.
Shows Column and Row group hierarchies of Tablix members for currently selected Tablix data region. You can also switch between Horizontal and Vertical mode.
Click on the Report Viewer tab to view a preview of the report template being edited, populated with data from the current Project.
Learn the different types of layout options for your reports.
Learn about the features available through report dialog in reports.
Learn about layers that can overlay with other groups of controls on a report.
Learn about expressions that you can use in reports.
Learn about filters in reports,
Learn about grouping data in reports,
Learn about the features in reports that support interactive capabilities.
Learn about customizing the appearance of reports.