I recently finished putting together a Pediatric Growth Chart which was a really fun exercise. It’s a rather unusual and complex looking chart but is actually possible to do using simple CDL. In this blog I thought I’d share how one particular chart feature made it possible.

As you’ll notice, there are many things going on. Taking a closer look, the chart uses two separate scales within a single axis scale and with both of these next to each other on both sides of the chart. These scales are of Weight and Stature in U.S. Standard and Metric units totalling 8 different scales. Then finally, one set of the percentile curves was mapped to Weight and the other to Stature.

In addition, the thicker grid is mapped to match the percentile curve values and needed to have exactly four lighter colored grid lines inside of each of the larger grid blocks. How would you do all this and most importantly, map the data correctly? The answer is clever use of a pretty powerful CDL feature – Multiple Axis.

So to be able to create this chart, there are actually 5 bottom axis (duplicates on the top). The U.S. Standard units are mapped to the first and last axis. The Metric units are mapped to the second and fourth axis. The third axis is used to map the percentile value (age data point) to its correct stature and weight.

For the grids to display correctly, the thicker one had to be mapped to the Kg units weight scale. The lighter grid also had to be mapped to the Kg units weight scale but a different one that used different sized steps in order to have exactly a four grid lines appearing inside of the thicker grid box.

And there you have it! Without boring you with too much detail, that’s pretty much how I configured the harder parts of this chart.