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Build a chart with shelves

Drag fields onto shelves like X-Axis, Y-Axis, Color, Size, Trellis, and Tooltip — or drop them straight onto the chart — to compose any chart.

3 min readUpdated October 23, 2026

Golden's chart builder follows a Tableau-style shelf model. You pick a chart type, then drag fields from your dataset onto labelled shelves. The chart re-renders as you go.

Canvas chart builder. The six shelves run across the top: X-Axis, Y-Axis, Color, Size, Trellis, Tooltip. The Fields panel on the left groups columns by Dates, Dimensions, Geographic, Measures, Calculated. The center reads "Double-click fields to start analyzing your data" with a "Describe what you want to visualize..." prompt below and suggested-prompt chips (Sales trend over time, Sales by Ship Mode, Top 10 Ship Mode, Total Sales).
The chart builder. Drop fields onto the shelves, double-click a field to add it to the default slot, or describe what you want in natural language.

The shelves

Shelves change depending on the chart type. The most common ones:

  • X-Axis - the field that lays out across the bottom (or up the side for horizontal bars). Accepts multiple fields.
  • Y-Axis - the measure plotted as height. Accepts multiple fields to plot several measures together.
  • Color - splits or colors the marks by a dimension, or sets a per-measure palette.
  • Size - scales mark size by a measure (used by scatter, bubble, and similar).
  • Trellis - splits the chart into small multiples by a dimension.
  • Tooltip - extra fields that show up only in the hover tooltip.
Note: Pie and donut charts use Slices and Values instead of X-Axis and Y-Axis. Gantt charts use Start Date and End Date side by side. Maps use a Location shelf. A table has just one shelf, Columns - color a table's cells with conditional formatting instead.

Building a chart

  1. Pick a chart type from the right toolbar.
  2. Drag a dimension onto the X-Axis (or Slices, for pie/donut).
  3. Drag a measure onto the Y-Axis (or Values).
  4. Optionally drop fields on Color, Size, Trellis, or Tooltip to refine.
  5. Use the field pill menu on any shelf to switch aggregation, sort, or formatting.

Drop a field onto the chart

You don't have to aim for a shelf. Drag a field from the Fields panel over the chart itself and the chart splits into drop zones, each labelled with what it would do — "Add to X-axis", "Replace Y-axis", "Break down by Color", and so on. These are the same choices you'd get dropping the field on a dashboard tile. Release over a zone to place the field there. The zones appear only while a field is in flight, so the chart keeps its normal clicks, brushing, and tooltips the rest of the time — and they work even when the shelf area is collapsed.

Breaking a bar chart down by color

When you add a dimension to a bar chart's Color shelf, Golden stacks the bars by that dimension rather than drawing a separate bar for every combination. Ten states broken down by three categories become ten stacked bars, not thirty. Horizontal bars stack the same way. Dropping a dimension onto a bar chart whose category axis is already filled defaults to this color breakdown; nesting the field on the axis instead is the next option down in the drop menu.

Tip: When you change chart type, Golden tries to keep your fields on equivalent shelves. If a shelf doesn't exist on the new chart type, those fields get dropped - check the shelf area after switching.

Every shelf shows a placeholder when empty, so you can see which fields a chart still needs before it will render.