Canvassing Library - Version 4.0

Canvassing/Diagramming Library - DEMO

With HeadStart Canvassing Library, developers won’t have to worry about the implementation details of the canvas, and can better utilize their time working on an application’s core functionality.

Features:

Enhanced Print Setup - He have greatly enhanced the printing capabilities to allow you to print professional looking diagrams with no programming required.
• Print an index page which shows the page where each object is located.
• Print continuation marks which makes putting large diagrams together much easier.
• Print the diagram at a different scale.
• Print margins with or without borders.
• Print headers and footers with predefined fields.
• Page lines displayed in the view so you can see where page breaks will occur.
• Command to reposition the objects to avoid being placed on a page break.

Automatic Layout Algorithms - We have added a modified Sugiyama layout algorithm which redraws the entire diagram, reducing the number of line crossings. We also have hierarchy layout alorithms which given the top node of a hierarchy, automatically position all child nodes in the hierarchy with no overlap or line crossings.

Exception handling - Automatically save all modified diagrams if an unhandled exception is detected.

Anchor Points - Set up one or more anchor points on an object. These anchors points determine where connectors will be attached to the objects.

Orthogonal Connectors - Option to create orthogonal lines between an objects anchor points.

Vertices - Create vertices as the connector is created or add them to existing connectors. Easily moveable and removeable.

Pan Window - A resizable miniature view of your diagram to make navigation of large diagrams easier.

Layout Grid - Optional gridlines and "snap to grid" feature to help position objects.

• Cut, copy, paste
• Flicker free move
• Drag and Drop
• Drag scrolling
• Maintains connections between objects
• Context sensitive menus
• Multiple selection
• Rubberband selection
• Alignment operations
• Multiple page printing
• Zoom in/out
• Visual indication of duplicate objects
• Save/load to a file
• Canvas can grow/shrink as needed
• Palette support for creating objects
• Connectors support arrows
• Find Dialog
• Color/Font Support
• Fully customizable and Easily extendible (completely open architecture)
• Object oriented customization: derive a new shape from an existing shape to inherit all of its behaviors.

HeadStart Canvassing provides complete extensibility. Your graphical objects can be as simple or complicated as you want, as each object is able to draw itself.  Therefore, new components are not restricted to be comprised of already existing components, as in some other tools.  This gives you tremendous flexibility. Connectors have the same flexibility, which allows you to draw/decorate the connectors in any way you like.

The HeadStart canvassing library has many world-class features that will make your product shine above competitors.  For instance:

• Ability to specify the insert cursor to  reflect the kind of object being inserted.  (When placing a circle, cursor looks like a circle, etc.).
• Shows individual object shadows during multiple object dragging (rather than one big shadow)
• Resizable pan window
• Line Shadows (so you can see what the connectors will look while dragging objects)
• Find dialog, and find toolbar
• Growing canvas
• Built-in support for duplicate canvas objects (Two or more visual representations on the canvas of a single object). 

If you need any canvassing functionality that isn't included in the library, we can build it for you. 

Just check "Canvassing" in HeadStart's extended appwizard, and canvas support will automatically be added to the generated starter files. This downloadable demo shows the skeleton application you get when you generate an MDI application with canvassing (as opposed to the demo at the top of the page which was modified to show more of the canvassing functionality).