With IB I am able to trade directly trade from Multicharts.Net and Motivewave app. This was a long time wish for me so good to experience it finally.
Anybody wondering, the same should be possible with NT(and All other 3rd party app which has IB integration ) but I don't have a license for NT so I have not tested it but it should work. With NT free version you can always connect and get the charts working without trading privilege.
TWS is not bad but will take time to get used to it. I am still trying get the hang of it.
you have to first launch TWS app and then launch 3rd party app and the 3rd party app will connect to TWS.
At a time you can connect to only one 3rd party app obviously.
Both TWS and your 3rd party app simultaneously work so no issues and TWS is always a backup if some connectivity issues happen with the 3rd party app.
My second question that I had was can I get rid of my datafeed provider and completely use IB for charting. The answer to that unfortunately is NO.
IB has some limitation with 3rd party apps pulling data.
Here is link that details it.
So in a nutshell if you pull too much data in short duration then it will error out frequently with "pacing violation" timeout error.
https://interactivebrokers.github.io/tws-api/historical_limitations.html
Depending on your usage it may or may not be usable. my experience Multicharts it was worse and with Motivwave it was little better.
But obviously to live trade with these limitation is scary.
Another thing that I notice was data quality.
In my short experience they are bad they are equivalent to say kite quality data.
so yes the dedicated data feed provider(Currently mine is Truedata) data quality is definitely better than IB.
to be continued .....
Please post your questions on IB and I will try to answer.
Also other people who currently use IB please participate.