Lesson 27 Drawing Rectangle

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In the previous lesson, we have learned how to create Graphics and Pen objects to draw straight lines in Visual Basic 2022. Now we shall learn how to draw rectangles.

27.1 Drawing a Rectangle

Method 1

The first is to draw a rectangle directly using the DrawRectangle method by specifying its upper-left corner’s coordinate and its width and height. The method of the Graphics object to draw the rectangle is DrawRectangle.The syntax is:

myGrapphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, X, Y, width, height)

*myGraphics is the variable name of the Graphics object and myPen is the variable name of the Pen object created by you.

You can use any valid and meaningful variable names. X, Y is the coordinate of the upper left corner of the rectangle while width and height are the width and height of the rectangle.

The code is as follows:

Dim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5)
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, 0, 0, 100, 50)

Method 2

The second method is to create a rectangle object first and then draw this rectangle using the DrawRectangle method. The syntax is as shown below:

myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen,myRectangle)

where myRectangle is the rectangle object created by you, the user.

The code to create a rectangle object is as shown below:

Dim myRectangle As New Rectangle
myRect.X = 10
myRect.Y = 10
myRect.Width = 100
myRect.Height = 50

You can also create a rectangle object using a one-line code as follows:

Dim myRectangle As New Rectangle(X,Y,width, height)

and the code to draw the above rectangle is

myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, myRectangle)

27.2 Customizing Line Style of the Pen Object

The shape we draw so far is drawn with a solid line. However, we can customize the line style of the Pen object so that we can draw a dotted line, a line consisting of dashes and more. For example, the syntax to draw the dotted line is shown below:

myPen.DashStyle=Drawing.Drawing2D.DashStyle.Dot

Where the last argument Dot specifies a particular line DashStyle value, a line that makes up of dots here. Other DashStyles values are Dash, DashDot, DashDotDot, and Solid. The following code draws a rectangle with a blue dotted line.

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.ClickDim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5)
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myPen.DashStyle = Drawing.Drawing2D.DashStyle.Dot
myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, 10, 10, 100, 50)

End Sub

The output image is as shown in Figure 27.1

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