Tutorial 181 | Three Line Break on minute chart using a vector object | TradeStation tutorials

Tutorial 181 from Markplex.com talks through the creation of an indicator to ‘mimic’ the behavior of a three line break chart. The functionality is very similar to tutorial 23 however, whereas tutorial 23 uses an array, this tutorial uses the Vector class.

See the tutorial pages:
Tutorial 23 - https://markplex.com/free-tutorials/tutorial-23-creating-3-line-break-3lb-indicator-apply-normal-candlestick-charts/
Tutorial 181 - https://markplex.com/free-tutorials/tutorial-181-three-line-break-on-normal-chart-using-vectors/

Line break charts
Line breaks charts ignore time. New ‘up’ lines are only added when a bar closes higher than the high of the previous up line. Once up lines are being drawn price has to go below the low of a specified number of up lines in order to create a new down line. New ‘down’ lines are only added when a bar closes below than the low of the previous down line. Once down lines are being drawn price has to go above the high of a specified number of down lines in order to create a new ‘up’ line.

This tutorial program is designed to be applied to a minute (e.g. 5 minute, 15 minute, 60 minute) bar chart. Because these charts do have a linear time element multiple ‘lines’ would be drawn whereas on an actual line break chart the same move would be represented by one line.

Technical lessons covered in this tutorial include:

Converting an EasyLanguage program to use a Vector rather than an array
Drawing rectangles using the legacy EasyLanguage syntax (e.g. TL_New) and also using the Rectangle object and formatting options
Converting legacy date and time to a DateTime object
Converting color objects for use in the plot statement
Using methods to create and update drawing objects
Ensuring that there are only a maximum number of drawing objects drawn on the chart.