I have created a class that allows the user to drag panels on a forms. How can I ensure
that the user does not place two panels on top of each other? If they do, I would like to shift/or highlight one of the control while they are both overlapped.
I tried setting this in OnMouseDown event but that didn't quite work.
Also, the number of panels on the form vary depending on the number of pictures the form needs to show. Each panel has a picturebox inside the panel.
A much better approach is to use the Rectangle.Bounds.IntersectsWith method, which does the check for you and can produce cleaner code. I'm personally unaware of any performance issues or benefits, one way or the other, although I would venture a guess that simply looping over your controls and checking them with this would be faster than building lists and loops both.
Picturebox pic = new Picturebox();
foreach(Control picturebox in Form1){
if (pic.Bounds.IntersectsWith(picturebox.Bounds))
{
//We have a problem, Houston, because we just collided!
}
}
I hope this helps, even though you asked this question some time ago.
So I was able to solve this question with the help of sgud's suggestion.
The trick was to use Rectangle.Intersect method inside OnMouseUp event raised.
Here is the intuition I used behind it. (it might not be the neatest solution)
1) Create a list of all the controls inside my main panel.
2) Traverse through the controls and create a list of all the Rectangle Bounds for each control. you can get this by control.Bounds
3) Go through the list of Bounds and intersect it with the currently active element's bound.
If the returned rectangle has height and width the same as the active control then assign change the back color property.
I hope this helps to anyone else that have a similar problem
Related
So I am working on a program that has several screens which causes it to have overlapping controls (Buttons and lists).
I put the controls in panels which works great and then do show/hide for the panels.
This also works well.
I am having a problem now that I am up to several panels where when I move one panel up it gets absorbed by another and I need them to stay separate.
Example: When I move panel2 into place over panel1, panel2 becomes part of panel1. Then when I do panel1.Hide() and panel2.Show(), panel2 is still hidden because it is part of panel1. is there a way for me to ungroup these or move panel2 into place without it automatically becoming part of panel1? (I know I can show hide the controls inside of the panels, but this will add a lot of complexity because I have a ton of controls)
Perhaps there is a better solution than using panels?
You can use the View + Other Windows + Document Outline tool window to get these panels separated again. Drag the inner panel back to the parent. You'll then also have to edit the Location property to get it back in the right position.
This is annoying of course and good odds that you'll have to do this repeatedly. There's a better way to go about it, a TabControl has good design-time support and also has the same "overlapping panel" metaphor. You just need to hide the tabs at runtime. That's pretty easy to do, check the StackPanel control in this answer.
I have a UserControl that adds other UserControls, but I want the "latest" control added to be topmost so it's above the others. Because the controls should be overlapping eachother. Like a card game. So I add 5 controls, the first one should have the least priority the latest the most priority - most visible.
Any ideas?
Or do I have to override the Paint method for the "container" control? And Control.CreateGraphics() and draw it?
Consider BringToFront and SendToBack methods of the Control class.
Check out answers to these questions too
How to set Z-order of a Control using WinForms
Bring Winforms control to front
Just use userControl1.BringToFront() when you add the new control.
Note however, that won't prevent the user from "tabbing" into the controls that are underneath it. For that, you need to disable or make invisible the other controls.
In Windows Forms, the order in which controls are added to their parents' Controls collection determines the order of their rendering.
This means that either you handle the addition of child controls in code and use the appropriate insert positions, or you move the controls around in the designer (which, unfortunately, often means dangerous hand edits to the *.Designer.cs file).
I recommend that you go for the first approach, which is the only feasible method for larger WinForms projects anyway, and make the control insertion logic explicit in your code. The good news, by the way, is that there is no need to tinker with paint handlers, so your worry about hacks like using CreateGraphics() is unjustified and dispelled :)
I'm trying to write a simple GUI that renders a number of images using the Graphics' object primitives. What I want to have is a series of areas that I can paint to in isolation of the other areas, so that each painting "canvas" has it's own origin within the global coordinate frame of the top-level form.
So far I have tried adding several panels to a FlowLayoutPanel. However, they seem to be getting placed one on top of the other, as only one onPaint method is being called. I can override the Form's onPaint to invalidate the other panels, which are then painted, but not displayed.
Besides setting the sizes, and initialising the FlowLayoutPanel, is there something I'm missing? Is there a better way of doing this?
Code: http://pastebin.com/30Uf9AGF
based on the names of your classes, it looks like you are designing a game ... maybe you want to take a look at Microsofts XNA framework?
however, the problem with the code you provided is, your layoutPanel is not sized correctly, therefore its child-controls are not visible on the main form... since painting is only done for visible items ... there is no painting for most of your FloorDrawPanels ...
try changing the size of your layoutPanel or setting its dock mode to fill
You don't set the size of the FlowLayoutPanel. It will default to 200 x 100 with a Margin of 3. You fill it with controls that are 100 x 100. Given the margin, only one of those controls can ever be visible at the same time. It is therefore no surprise that you only ever get one paint event, Windows only asks visible controls to paint themselves.
Not quite sure what was intended, start by making the FLP bigger. And set its AutoScroll property to true so that the user can scroll the other controls into view. Using the designer would have been a quick way to find this out btw.
I try to explain my problem:
I got many customcontrols of same type on a panel.
At runtime I'm free to move any custumcontrol ( mousedown and mousemove events) in the form with mouse over any others customcontrols using bringtofront() to have it over all.
Now I need to know when the control I'm moving is over any other control and which control is under.
So far I've tryed to use drag-n-drop events but without success, there's some other way to do this or I've to re elaborate it with drag events?
thank you all for help
and sorry for my English.
EDIT:
The controls are cards game and my final goal is to use cards to create logical sequence following rules based on card value and/or color.
You can't solve the problem with drag-and-drop because you're not actually dropping one control onto the other control. You're merely moving them around in the form.
You need to become familiar with Z order, which is the front-to-back arrangement of objects in a virtual 3D space. To adjust the Z order, you can call the BringToFront and SendToBack methods of any object that derives from System.Windows.Forms.Control.
The Z order is also exposed by the parent (container) control's Controls collection. Using the GetChildIndex method, you can determine the position of any control within the Z order.
So now, all you need to do is figure out which control the control you're dragging is over. Do that by comparing the Location properties of the two controls. When you know that the locations of two controls overlap, check their respective Z order indices to see which one is on top.
I'm making a bomberman game in a C# windows form application. It has over 300 pictureboxes (walls) that are placed on a panel. The picturebox of bomberman himself is also on that panel.
When the location of bombermans picturebox changes, all the controls on the panel are automatically refreshed. Because there are so many controls on that panel, and because the location of the picturebox changes multiple times per second, the program becomes laggy when I try to move.
I want to have control over the refresh event of the panel (and it's controls), because I think my problem is solved when only the pictureboxes that need to be refreshed, are refreshed programmatically.
I hope someone can help me out with this!
Ruud.
If you move the child, the parent has to be refreshed because it may need to draw the area where child was located previously. It would also mean that all children (of parent) would get refreshed.
OTH, using so many controls may not be a good idea. I would suggest you to keep data structures describing walls and then use it to draw it within Panel (or your custom control). You can write your own logic for hit testing (mouse or keyboard click within wall boundary) by capturing mouse/keyboard events at Panel/Parent level. With correct organization data structure, hit testing can be very efficient.
You are trying to paint the whole form which will surely take time . If you want to change only a part of the form, which in your case is Moving the bomberman to a new position, Only invalidate the area you want to repaint and then pass it to the Invalidate method.
Do something similar to this.
//Invalidate previous position of bomberman
Rectangle invalid = new Rectangle(picturebox1.Location.x,picturebox1.Location.y,picturebox1.Width,picturebox1.Height);
Invalidate(invalid);
//Add code to move your picture box and then call above two lines again
invalid = new Rectangle(picturebox1.Location.x,picturebox1.Location.y,picturebox1.Width,picturebox1.Height);
Invalidate(invalid);
Note sure but somthing similar polished code would work...
Here is a link to an example for reference. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229628.aspx