ZOrder Again

[DaveS]

Has anybody out there discovered how to set a ZOrder programatically?
I would like to make a strat look semi- professional by mimicing the graphical functions of Chart Trader, but the price bars cover up my lines and text. I did once manage to set it in one strat using ZOrder = 100 in Initialize, or at least it seemed to have the desired effect. Thing is, its never worked since.
Please NT employees. don't tell me its not supported, - I know,
Found a few threads on here but nothing in them has any effedt.

Thing is, Chart Trader manages to put its lines and labels on top of the price bars, so it must be possible.

Thanks in advance for any info.
Dave

[BigWaveDave]

Hint: Make sure you draw *after* NT draws the bars

One way to do this is to override the Paint function.

[NinjaTrader_JC]

Hello Dave,

About as much as we can go over is discussed at the following thread.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/forum/showthread.php?t=45252

Please note if you are referring to the Price Bars that are generated by Chart Trade for the Buy/Sell orders, you will not be able to make the ZOrder above them since they are programmed to be always over the top of everything. This is done so that nothing gets in the way of your trades. See attached image below.

[DaveS]

Hi BigWave.
I will try to look at that, but don't know much about the NT undocumented functions, (most of them seem to be undocumented and unsupported). I don't suppose you know of an example that uses Paint on the forum?

Thanks for your help
Dave

[DaveS]

Hi JC
Tried all that sort of thing from several threads, spent all day trying various combinations and permutations of it. Nothing I tried had any effect whatever.
But, as I said, I know you dont support it.

Dave

[DaveS]

JC
Missed a bit - I am trying to do this in a strat, so Chart Trader is not present, I'm just frustrated cos Chart Trader CAN do it and I can't.

[BigWaveDave]

The chart panel Paint function is invoked every .5 seconds by default (and perhaps everytime a bar update occurs, not sure).

Don't do your painting on OnBarUpdate... do it in a paint handler for the chart panel.

[DaveS]

I have discovered that it is possible to do this in Initialise(). All you have to do is set a very high number

this.ZOrder = 100000; worked for me, so I set it to 1000000 in my strat to make sure.