D3 is for high performance custom data visalizations.
For example, I built a in-door navigation app. It would receive its data via MQTT/WebSockets and update markers on custom maps.
D3 was perfect for this, it helped with synchronizing graphics with data, converting mapping cooridnates to DOM/SVG coordinates and easing all the updates so stuff looked smooth.
You just would pump the incoming data into the D3 pipeline and be done with it.
If you just need a few animations, there are a bunch of simple libraries for this. React has react-motion for example, it's not as flexible as D3 but you get most stuff you would expect out of it without much hassle.
If you just need a set of basic charts, use a charting library. Highcharts or Charts.js are both very capable.
My work has been pretty interested in "interactive" charts, being able to modify axis scales on the fly, change filter range, dynamically add and remove series that sort of thing. We use SAS (and a little bit of R internally) and those both have good charting capabilities but trying to do anything interactive in either of those packages is a real pain. In the past we have used a C++ library SL-GMS.
Even when compared with using C++ I have found using JavaScript based libraries difficult D3 in particular I found to be horrendously complex.
For example, I built a in-door navigation app. It would receive its data via MQTT/WebSockets and update markers on custom maps.
D3 was perfect for this, it helped with synchronizing graphics with data, converting mapping cooridnates to DOM/SVG coordinates and easing all the updates so stuff looked smooth.
You just would pump the incoming data into the D3 pipeline and be done with it.
If you just need a few animations, there are a bunch of simple libraries for this. React has react-motion for example, it's not as flexible as D3 but you get most stuff you would expect out of it without much hassle.
If you just need a set of basic charts, use a charting library. Highcharts or Charts.js are both very capable.