December 17, 2004

12:38 bill: Hi Howard, , , I am running 12-15 beta, IB feed, , , my Global bbs keep going flat and some time they disappear all together, then reappear, a few minutes later, any thoughts on this problem?

12:39 @Ensign_H: bill, please read the last section in the article I show above

www.ensignsoftware.com/help/globalvariables.htm

12:40 @Ensign_H: the issue is the chart is recalculating and when it does it does not have varying GVs which I presume are being set by a different chart. So the best it can do is show the constant value seen in the GV

12:41 @Ensign_H: what you can do to minimize the frequency of the chart recalculating is the erase some bars leftward so the number of bars in the file is not near its Max Bar count.

12:45 @Ensign_H: bill you might be near Max Bar in the chart bar count and if this is a fast chart that builds bars quickly. It would be resizing the chart every 60th bar and recalculating in the resize and then it flatlines.

12:45 @Ensign_H: solution is to manually delete bars leftward using the pop-up Delete menu so the resize will not happen for a longer period of time.

12:46 bill: Max Bars at 2000

12:46 @Ensign_H: ok, now look on the left and what is the # Bars

12:46 bill: 1951

12:46 @Ensign_H: ok, it will resize in 48 bars from now

12:47 @Ensign_H: try this, change Max Bar to 4000 and it will not resize now for 2000 bars. Each day you might delete some bars leftward to cut the chart back to say 2000 bars so it can grow back up to 4000. Then the recalculates will not be kicking in because resizing is not kicking in

12:48 bill: Great Howard, !

Howard's reply to an email asking about GV flatlining: (Thanks mmaker)

The Z order is the least of the issues. All that affects is who calculates first. The flat lining is when chart has to do a full recalculate and that happens when the chart needs to be resized. Resize happens when we reach the Max Bar count and then drop off 30 earliest bars to make room to grow with new bars being added. If this is a 1-min chart, it happens every 30 minutes. On a tick chart I think we drop off 60 bars and then it grows again. What you can do is position cursor on the left of the chart and use pop-up menu Delete | Delete Left to erase lots of bars so you have lots of room to grow before you arrive at Max Bar limit again. Then your recalculate event will happen less often.

Users further comment: (Thanks mmaker)

Oh by the way I added 10,000 bars and the global variable from the higher timeframe worked fine. This explains why it worked fine for two days and then started flatlining on chart redraws.
(Remember that higher max bars is higher CPU usage.)