Build my own gauge

Dashboard Design Help, tips and tricks
1

Hello all,

If I want to build my own gauge, what keypoints should I keep in mind?

  • Initial size
  • start/end points
  • gauge math?
  • Needle/bar movement

Let’s start “easy” and take the ARC guage from the Swedisch Special dash as example. The gauge is an arc with a white fill up as “needle”. Inside the arc are the numbers, wich can scale to the car’s maximum value.

Let’s say I want to create the following (all done in Adobe Illustrator):
An arc style gauge (start angle 220, sweep angle 100). The gauge will be used for Coolant temp. The outlines of the arc gauge are white, but the top part will be red, so if the bar hits the top, I can see it is “in the red”. How does RD know what scale the red part is and where the “bar” must be with a certain temperature? How to make the moveble “bar” or does RD make that bar by itself within the lines of the (I guess transparent) background image?
Where do I start?

Thank you in advance.

2

Basically it all comes down to usage of gauge Normal, Warning and Critical levels. Start by watching these tutorial videos:
http://realdash.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&sid=d6c2b3b482a408f40cb924a67830b5f3

3

That part I completely understand.

I want to build a gauge from scratch using Adobe Illustrator to make them, because I can make it with a transparent background. So I want to know how I should build the image I want to use as gauge.

I took the Arc gauge from the Swedish Special as example because the Arc fills itself when the input value is increasing.

If I rebuild the arc gauge from the above sample, in the design software (Illustrator in this case), I will draw an arc like the above example, so it is open inside the arc, so it can “fill” when the value increases (RPM value for example).
How do I make a gauge from scratch, what elements do I have to build/design in Illustrator and then import in RealDash, etc?

4

How Arc gauge works is that the indicator image is cut like a pie diagram when showing the value. The start-sweep and other angles can be modified in Look’n Feel. If you don’t need a rounded ‘butts’ on the arc indicator, you can basically just make an circle in authoring tools and RealDash will clip it properly to set range and angles.

5

If I understand it right:

  • RealDash fills in a Gauge with 2 "edges"like the “hollow arc” when setting the start and sweep angle? Or do I have to create the fill image also myself?

To make it easy to understand: If I make a bar in Adboe Illustrator that is just a “hollow” rectangle, when importing the PNG file into RealDash, it will automaticly fill that when the value increases?

6

if your strip does not have pixels at all then RealDash will reproduce void

7

Thank you both for your quick replies. I will look into it further and will experiment a lot. If everything works as I want it, maybe I will make a tutorial for others who want to start building their own gauges from scratch.

Another question: If I make an image of a round segment gauge with everything in it exept for the needle. Starting point will be 220 and sweep will be 270. I already have the segments and RPM numbers in the gauge image, can I calculate how far the segments should be apart from eachother? Or is this impossible by RD because of scaling the gauge?

8
  1. the image of the scale (not the arrow) will remain static, as you draw it.
    the angle can be changed in the settings
  2. the image of the arrow rotates around its center.
  3. Of course, you can calculate the distance by turning on the image of segments in the sensor for the time of adjustment, after you finish, just hide it by turning off the “AutoStation” function
9

Ofcourse, should have thought about that myself. But what I meant was: If I inport a gauge BC image with 1 thru 7 with the right angle, it will alwasy correspond with the right angle of the needle if I set minimum to 0 and maximum to 7000 (for RPM in this example)?

I use the Swedisch Special dash as init dash and use some of the elements available in there. If I start the original dash, I see the numbers 1 thru (in my case) 7 in the RPM gauge. If I make a new gauge (with the SS elements), I only get gauges with 1000 thru 7000, but I want 1 thru 7. Can I change how many numbers are shows like 1 instead of 1000?

10

Sorry, I have trouble understanding what you mean. I recommend that you experiment by yourself to see how it works in practice.

11

preparing own dashbaord is very challenging, I use minimum 3 different programs to get it done, I prefer using win10 or Bluestacks win7 android emulator, it’s a bit complicated with all disadvantages, but will handle the job. For fast vector designing I use CorelDraw with exporting to png, other software handles the transparent background (in realdash - its very important for custom face gauge with bargraphs), for custom font - any font creator/editor (had some issues with spacing “1” digit in LCD style font).
Remember to set proper resolution in BlueStacks emulator or if not possible do it proportionally, in my case BS cant handle 1280x480 so I went 1440x540, after transfering .rd file to android device, dashboard looks like it was made in BS

12

Why not use Realdash on windows?

13

because not every1 wants to use shitty win10

14

The last part I meant: The RPM gauge in the Swedish Special dashboard has the RPM’s/1000 so 1000 is just a 1, 2000 is just a 2 and so on. If I add a new gauge with the same style, I get 1000 instead of 1 and 2000 instead of 2 (like on a real dash normaly is). Can I alter a setting so I get just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, instead of 1000, 2000, 3000, and so on?

Never mind, found it. Edit Gauge>Look&Feel>Special>Autoscaling>edit “max digits”

15

:smiley: