Drawing on a form

[Sand_Hawk]

Hi,

I want to create my own Controls by using API calls. I have some lil' experience with creating controls from building further on an exsiting control. Is there a tutorial on how to draw these things from scratch? I mean not by using an existing control but just take an empty form and draw all the lines.

Thnx

Sand Hawk

[MerrionComputin]

All drawing, whether on a form or a control, is performed on the given window's device context .

You can get a handle to this device context (e.g Form.HDC) and pass that to the large number of drawing functions that take this as one of their parameters.
For example, if you wanted a control that looked like a frame, you could use the DrawEdge method or to paint a picture onto the control you could use the BitBlt method.


HTH,
Duncan

[Sand_Hawk]

Can you point me to a tut that explains this is a simple matter? I have done so GDI drawing with C++ but I want some more explanation about it in VB.

Thnx

Sand Hawk

[MerrionComputin]

Drawing in VB (other than by using the intrinsic controls) uses exactly the same API calls as drawing using GDI in C++.

The only difference is that you have to explicitly import (declare) those functions and their associated constants before you can use them.

I have done this in the EventVB.dll for simplicity sake - see the link under "device context" in the above post. However if you do not wish to use a third party dll then you can find most of the function declarations in the API Function Loader applet that comes with VB.

[jim mcnamara]

Go to www.allapi.net

There are several examples of using GDI on forms.

Go into api list, search for the api's below, and look at the tutorials & examples for each one.

DrawFrameControl
DrawIcon
Arc
PolyBezier