CapeSoft DrawTutorials
Documentation

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Jumpstart:The result of following the JumpStart section. Th most basic example of how to use Draw. The ABC version is called QuickDraw.app, the Legacy version is QuickLegacy.app.

This section of the Draw documentation covers the examples that ship with Draw, along with tutorials and "JumpStart" guides, which are aimed at getting you started as quickly and simply as possible.

Examples and Walkthroughs

Demo	Draw 2.10 ships with a new Demo application that is a great place to get a feel for some of the things that are possible to do quite simply using Draw. This application demonstrates all the basic functions in Draw as well as some neat effects like drop shadows, pie slices, shaded bars etc.
Draw Layers	The new Draw example application that ships with Draw 2.00 and later. Allows you to Draw to an image control and shows off a few of Draw's layer features.
DrawImage	Uses the DrawImage methods provided by Draw to demonstrate loading an saving many different file formats (JPEG, PNG, BMP etc.) as well as various image manipulating options provided.
DrawPaint	DrawPaint is a powerful additional class provide by Draw, which extends Draw and provides the ability for the user to manipulate the objects on Draw control. This provides persistent objects (boxes, text, pictures and so on) that can be selected dragged, moved, modified, deleted and added to by the user.
DrawAlpha	This demonstrates using Alpha Layers in Draw to provide "soft" transparency effects quickly and simply. If you are familiar with Layers Masks in Photoshop, you will be right at home with Draw!
Pattern	A simple application that allows you to build patterns for use with Draw's built in support for pattern based fills.
3DMap	An application that demonstrates Draw creating a 3D map from polygons in wireframe, or shaded, and allowing the map to be rotated and manipulated in real-time.

Unlike the Clarion drawing functions, the Draw control does not display the result as each function is called, you need to call the Draw.Display() method to update the Draw control. Before drawing, you can call the Blank method to erase everything on the Draw control, or simply draw over the existing image. This allows you to do real-time animation, simply by calling all the drawing commands before calling Display to update the control, and Blank between each frame of the animation. Note that Blank does not take effect until Display is called

Like the Clarion image control, the origin of the Draw control is the top left corner and is (1,1). See the image below.


A typical usage of the Draw methods would be:

!--- Call draw methods and call Display() to display the result
Drawer.Blank()            ! Blanks image control
Drawer.SetPenColor(COLOR:Red)
Drawer.Ellipse(1, 1, Drawer.width, Drawer.height, COLOR:Green)
Drawer.Display()        ! Redraws image control with new contents

This would display an ellipse with red line and a green fill that is the width and height of the Draw control.

You can draw to any image control on a window or a report, however when drawing to a report, you need to call the Clarion SetTarget(Report) function before calling any Draw methods. You can call SetTarget() with no parameters to make the current topmost window the current target. See the section on Using Draw on a Report

There are a number of examples in your \Clarion\3rdParty\Examples\Draw directory. The examples are a great way to get started and see a few of the ways you can use CapeSoft Draw. Draw ships with the following examples:

Keen to get started? Or just don't like wading through all the documentation? This section is just for you - the basics on how to get Draw working as quickly and simply as possible.

This jump start will show you how to place a Draw control on a window and draw a red rectangle into the control. The completed app is in the /3rdparty/examples/Draw/JumpStart/ directory in you Clarion directory (QuickDraw.app is the ABC version and QuickLegacy is the Legacy version).

• Create a new application (or open an existing one). The app must be compiled as 32-bit, as Draw does not support 16-bit programs.
• Select a procedure with a window that you would like to place the Draw control on (create one if necessary), right click the procedure name and choose "window" to open the window formatter.
• Place an image control on the window. You will be prompted to select the control template to use, choose "Draw - CapeSoft Draw control". Resize the Draw control - you can make it any size you like.
• Right click on the Draw control and choose "Actions".
  Change the name of the object to "drawer". Click OK
• Place a button on the window and change the text to read "Blank".
  Right click on the button and choose "embeds" . In the "Control Events" section, double click on "Accepted" and choose "Source". Type the following code into the embed:
  
  drawer.Blank (color:white)
  drawer.Display()
  
  The first line of code clears the Draw layer to white, the second line then write resultant pixels to the image control. Each time you call the Draw methods you need to call Display() to update the image control. Click "Exit" to leave the embeditor (click Yes when it prompts you to save your work) and close the embeds window.
• Place a second button on the window with the text "Box". Follow the same steps as above, except this time use place the following code in the Accepted embed:
  
  drawer.Box(10, 10, Random(80, 200), Random(80, 200), color:red)
  drawer.Display()
  
  This will draw a red box with the top left hand corner at (10, 10) and a width and height of between 80 and 200 pixels. Again exit the embeditor and save you work. You can now exit the window editor, save the application, compile and run it. You may notice that the box has a black border, you can set the pen color that is used to draw line by calling the SetPenColor() method.
• Try adding the following code before the call to drawer.Box():
  
  drawer.SetPenColor (Random (color:black ,color:white ))
  
  You can also try out the SetPenWidth() method to set the line thickness.
  
  For more advanced examples see the Examples section.

Useful Information

• Methods use in the quickstart
  Blank() - clears the current layer to the color specified
  Display() - writes all visible layers to the image control
  Box() - Draws a rectangle
  SetPenColor() - sets the current pen color (used for drawing lines and borders)
• Layers
  In the above example we completely ignored the fact that Draw supports multiple layers. When the Draw object is first created it creates a layer and sets it as the active layer, so it is possible to simply ignore the fact that a layer is being used. Layers allow a huge amount of flexibility and power, see the section on Layers for more information.
• Lines and Fills
  In addition to setting the pen and fill colors, Draw also supports patterned fill and pens. See SetFill() and SetPenStyle()
• Shading
  As well as supporting simple shapes like boxes, lines and ellipses Draw has methods that create shapes with complex color shaded fills for boxes, cylinders, ellipses and even shaded lines.