I need to render the value of the width or height of a 2d geometry object and the request is for it to not just be text, but somewhat like a dimension that would be a set of building plans. Something like this image...oops too new to post images...like this image that I googled -
http://www.archidigm.com/lounge/archdim/centerline_dim_1.gif
I have looked for something like this, but haven't been lucky in my search. I am fine with creating it, but thought that I would try to not reinvent the wheel if possible. Anyone know of a control or library out there that renders something like this?
This article looks really helpful: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613591.aspx. Although it talks about optimizing drawing, it gives mention to a lot of different classes you can use.
Specifically, take a look at the Drawing class: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.drawing.aspx#snippetGroup1
If you want the shapes to be interactive (because it seems like you are building a CAD-like application), the DrawingGroup might help. Check out this example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.drawinggroup.aspx#snippetGroup
Also, DrawingGroup might be a good way to group the actual shape (for example, a wall in a building) and the ruler object that shows the dimensions.
Related
Is there a way to change the clutter perspective for a given container or widget?
The clutter perspective controls how all the clutter actors on the screen are displayed when rotated, translated, scaled, etc.
What I would really like to do is to change the perspective's origin from the center of the screen to another coordinate.
I have messed with a few of the stage methods. However, I haven't had much luck understanding some of the results, and often I hit some stability issues.
I know there are transformation matrices that do all the logic under the hood, and there are documented ways to change the transform matrices. Honestly, I haven't researched much further and just though I would ask for guidance before spending a lot of time on it.
Which leads me to another question regarding the matrices and transformations. Can one of these matrices be used to skew an actor? Or deform it into a trapezoid, etc? And any idea how to get started on that, ie. what a skew matrix would look like?
Finally, does anyone know why the clip path was deprecated? It seems that would have worked for what I ultimately want to do: draw irregular shaped 2d objects on the screen If I can implement an answer to question 2, then I guess a clip box with a transformation can be used here.
1, I do not know if (or how) one might change the Clutter stage's focal point.
2 A skew or shear transformation matrix is easy enough to construct, and can be implemented in the GJS Clutter functions Clutter.Actor.set_transform(T) and Clutter.Actor.set_child_transform(T) where T is a Clutter.Matrix .
This does present another problem, however, for the current codebase; and this leads to another question. (I guess I should post it somewhere else). But, when a transform is set on a clutter actor (or its children), the rest of the actor's properties are ignored. This has the added effect that the Tweener library cannot be used for animation of these properties.
3 Finally, one can use Cairo to draw irregular shaped objects and paths on a Clutter actor, however, the reactive area for the actor (ie. mouse-enter and -leave events) will still be for the entire actor, not defined by the Cairo path.
The app I'm writing involves buttons that have a slight noise filter texture, which can be any size. For a standard button I'd simply use resizableImageWithCapInsets: but due to the texture, this causes unusual artefacts to appear on the resulting button.
A solution I have in mind, is to use the Core Image monochrome filter combined with the random noise filter to add the noise texture to a plain image. In theory this works, and in practice this has been shown to work (One example here) but these are all in cases where the button size is known at the point of invoking the CI code.
What I'm looking to do, is use the appearance proxies, so across the app I can simply set the style of UIBarButtonItems for instance.
Is there a way I can apply these CI filters to the buttons through the appearance proxies or isn't this possible? Would something like a category on UIImage to add noise work? I'm not entirely sure at which point the appearance proxy would actually invoke that code.
Any help is appreciated
OK So I finally solved it but found out some stuff on the way.
It seems you can create a category on UIImage and use that in the appearance proxy. I created a category to add noise, and it seemed to partly work, but I couldn't get it looking how I wanted as it wasn't quite rendering properly, but in the process of coding this discovered another method
resizableImageWithCapInsets:resizingMode:
Because the texture I was dealing with was simply noise, it could be tiled, so rather than the image now being stretched, the centre of the image is instead tiled which gives me the appearance I needed :)
My goal is to have a diagram which look like this
Each arrow should be a one dimensional chart, where point are displayed (colors and point size depends on some values)
I'm building my own chart system because I spent a few hours looking for one which allow to custom markers (size and colors, and maybe even shape) but I couldn't find one.
Actually the only one I found is dynamic data display 2.0 which is only proposed in Silverlight.
My biggest problem is the two curving chart I have to do at the top of the diagram.
I tried to use PathListBox control, but because it's a listBox, I couldn't display items at fixed X position (like using a chart).
I'm not asking for a full perfect solution, but can someone give me advices, or clues ?
How would you manage to do something like that ?
It should only be a XAML work here, because all the data are already ready in a ListCollectionView (i'm using MVVM).
Thank you !
I have a WPF application with many tabs..
in one tab.. i make a verycomplex vector drawing consisting of thousands of drawing visuals.. (this represents a machine and all elements need to be interactable..)
It takes 3/4 seconds for drawing this for the first time..After the first draw it should be done..
The problem is if i switch to another tab and comeback, it takes atlease 2,3 seconds to show the tabpage with drawing again.. Since there is no redraw, why should it take so much time..?
If the component is not going to change, you could call Freeze() on it to mark it as done. Without trying it out I don't know if that would help, but you could give it a shot.
Not all objects are Freezable. Check out the MSDN documentation for more info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms750509.aspx
Another thing you could try would be rendering the vector art to a bitmap, and displaying that. Maybe it makes you feel icky to lose the vector precision, but if you know it's not going to change and it will look the same, what's the harm? (If you support printing or something that will require a hi-res version, you could always switch back for that operation.) For info on how to convert a UIElement to a bitmap, check out:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.imaging.rendertargetbitmap.aspx
Another possible solution: You don't really explain what kind of interaction you are doing with the elements, but if all you want to do is zoom and pan, a RenderTransform may be good enough (which is more efficient than a LayoutTransform and/or moving all the elements individually). I haven't played around with combining Freeze() and a RenderTransform, but you may be able to get the desired zooming while reducing the amount of layout WPF has to do.
I need to write a gauge control in WPF for a project at work. By gauge control, I mean something akin to a traditional car speedometer: a circular face with numbers and ticks around the circumference, and a needle pointing to the current value. Although I could get my employer to purchase a third-party control, or even find a free one somewhere, I’d still like to write it myself, for curiosity’s sake more than anything else.
My first thought was to ‘skin’ an existing control using a template, something like a ProgressBar for example as it has Minimum, Maximum and Value properties. However, I don’t think this will offer me the flexibility that I need.
I’d like to animate the needle that points to the current value, so that when the gauge’s value changes the needle moves from the old value to the new value. I figured the easiest way to do this would be to have some kind of shape or geometry representing the needle, and then apply a RotateTransform of the relevant number of degrees to get the needle to point to the correct value. The animation’s To property would be set to the ‘value degrees’ property via binding.
It seems to me that there are three basic approaches I could take:
Use one custom FrameworkElement to represent the entire gauge
I could derive from FrameworkElement, override its OnRender method, then use the DrawingContext to draw both the gauge face and the needle. This would mean that I could no longer animate the needle directly using a RotateTransform, but would instead have to redraw the entire gauge every time the value changes. This seems inefficient to me, as the gauge face represents the bulk of the drawing code but would change very rarely. However, this approach is the most lightweight in terms of the number of elements used.
Use two custom FrameworkElements, one for the face and one for the needle
I’m currently leaning towards this approach. One element would represent the face, the other the needle. This would allow me to target the needle element with the RotateTransform. The gauge control would then consist of three elements: the face, the needle, and a Panel container to hold both of them (ie. Canvas, Grid, whatever). So three elements instead of one, hence not as lightweight as the first approach.
Use DrawingVisuals to draw the face and needle
I’ve also read about the DrawingVisual class, but I’m a bit confused as to why anyone would use this as opposed to deriving from FrameworkElement and overriding OnRender, given that DrawingVisual must be hosted in a custom FrameworkElement anyway. It would seem that this approach doesn’t offer any advantages over the second approach, and would require more code, but maybe I’m missing something.
Any thoughts or advice regarding which approach people think is best and why would be most welcome!
Personally I'd recommend making a CustomControl using the second approach. Unless you are going to be showing more than 1000 of the gauges in view at the same time you aren't going to notice the extra element in your visual tree and I think you'll find it's much easier to make and maintain.
You could just style a slider control and feed values into it. You should be able to make a slider look like any kind of gauge you need.