[C# / Visual Basic] Flow Diagrams

[Conrad11]

Hi there,

I am trying to learn 100s of things at once (not a good thing...lol). Anywho I have the Visual C# and Visual Basic Express Editions from Microsoft so I thought I would learn a bit of programming.

Anywys, for my next "project", I want the user to be able to drag and drop shapes onto a sort of working plane and assign propeties to that shape, like names and other properties, and be able to draw lines between the shapes and for them to work as flow diagrams.

I can understand that for a beginner this would be quite hard, but I am one that hates starting at the beginning even though its what you should do. I have learnt basic syntax and things like that.

I have also thought about this myself and thought maybe it could be done using coordinates of the shapes etc......can anyone point me in the right direction? or even better, show me a tutorial?

Thanks...

 

[Inquisitor]

You'd most likely need to create a custom control for that kind of thing (or at least in order to do it well), which involves the use of GDI+ to actually draw the control, and requires knowledge of inheritance etc. (to some extent).

To be honest, if you've only just started, you should leave this kind of thing until you are more familiar with the language as it's quite an advanced aspect of Windows Forms programming (I know that's boring, but that's just the way it is ). For now, just stick to learning the core C#/VB.NET concepts, getting to know the libraries, learning OOP techniques etc., it'll pay off in the long run.

I'd also recommend getting a good book on C# if you're serious about it, as it is a huge help to have something to refer to. I have Beginning Visual C# 2005 (assumes that you have VS2005 Professional, but the Express edition will be fine), and it really helped me get to grips with the language

 

[sfx]

Starting at the beginning is the only way. When I first started programming I gave up loads of times because I could not do what I wanted to do... In the end I took the long road of starting from the beginning, now I can code most of the thing I want/need to do straight off without the need to look at books/google.

Of course if I need to do something new then MSDN it is. I did dragging and dropping stuff a while ago and it is a right pain in the arse, not something I would be doing by choice if I could help it. It was only simple dragging and dropping to, you can get really advanced with it though if you really want to.

I never bothered with books myself I prefer to look at samples people have already done or MSDN.

sfx