Generating a histogram

To generate a histogram:

  1. Open the bar chart. To graph a resource's usage, costs or task work over specific tasks, select those tasks; to graph a resource's usage, costs, task work or the days on which activities are scheduled over a specific view, display that view. You can generate histograms for RBS and CBS views in addition to normal bar chart views.
  2. On the View tab, in the Graph group, click New Histogram. A new pane, divided into two sections - the histogram pane - appears along the bottom of the bar chart view:

    The histogram pane
  3. Click Format histogram on the Histogram toolbar, or right-click the histogram pane and select Format Histogram. The Format Histogram dialog appears. You use this dialog to specify the resources or cost centres you want to include in the histogram - or whether you want to graph task information, including task work and the days on which activities are scheduled - and the histogram report that you want to use, as well as to specify the way in which you want the histogram to be formatted.
  4. On the Details tab of the dialog, select the resources or cost centres that you want to graph in the Resources field. You can select a resource or cost centre folder, a single resource or cost centre, or more than one resource or cost centre (or folder) at the same time.

    If you want to graph task work or the days on which activities are scheduled during a project, rather than resources or cost centres, select Task in the Resources field.
  5. Select the histogram report that you want to use in the Report field. Histogram reports contain all the information required to generate the histogram, including display options and the resource definition graphs to be included. All the existing histogram reports in the project are listed. Select one of these, or click New to create a new histogram report.

    Make sure that the histogram report contains information relevant to what you are graphing. If you are graphing task work, you should select a histogram report that includes the AllocatedWork generator, against which no resource has been specified; if you are graphing the days on which activities are scheduled, you should select a histogram report that includes the Allocation generator, against which no resource has been specified.

Once you have selected the resource and the histogram report, the graphs that are included in the histogram report are displayed in the histogram pane:

The histogram appears below the bar chart

You can use the Row and View tabs of the Format Histogram dialog to configure the way in which the histogram is displayed.

If you want to edit the histogram report that is used in the histogram, click Edit on the Details tab of the Format Histogram dialog.

When you have one or more histograms displayed, you can add another histogram by right-clicking anywhere in the histogram pane and selecting Add New Histogram, to add a new histogram below the existing histograms, or by clicking Insert new histogram on the Histogram toolbar to insert a new histogram directly above the histogram row on which the control was pressed. You can then choose the resources or cost centres to graph and a histogram report using the Format Histogram dialog, as explained above. You can also add a new histogram by dragging a resource or cost centre from the Library Explorer and dropping it onto the blank area below the graph display area. A new histogram is created for that resource or cost centre.

You can allocate a resource to a task by dragging the resource from a histogram graph and dropping it on a task in the bar chart. The resource's default allocation is assigned.

You can move around the histogram pane using its scroll bars. If you have a wheel mouse, you can scroll up and down the histogram pane by rotating the wheel, and pan horizontally and vertically by clicking the wheel button to insert the origin mark then moving the pointer around the pane. The further you move the pointer from the origin mark, the faster you pan. To end panning, click any mouse button.

When graphing both the supply and consumption of a consumable resource in the same graph, consumption values are shown above the horizontal axis (positive) and supply values are shown below the horizontal axis (negative). For example, the graph below shows a supply of 5000 bricks on the Brick Delivery task, and a consumption of 2500 bricks on the Build Wall task:

Histogram showing supply and consumption

Related Topics:

Using histograms to graph activity days and task work

Creating a new histogram report

Editing histograms

Displaying histograms in a separate tab

Turning histograms on and off

Closing a histogram