#237 – Drawing Shapes with the Shape Subclasses

You can include various geometric shapes directly in a WPF GUI using subclasses of the Shape class.  Since Shape derives from FrameworkElement, you can insert instances of the Shape subclasses directly into a Panel container.

The various shapes that you can draw are:

• Ellipse – Draw an ellipse
  
• Line – Draw a line segment
  
• Path – Draw an arbitrary geometry consisting of a series of line segments
• Polygon – Draw a closed polygon
  
• Polyline – Draw a polyline–a series of connected line segments
  
• Rectangle – Draw a rectangle

Here’s a simple example in XAML that demonstrates the various shapes.

		<Ellipse Height="100" Width="180" Fill="Blue" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="2"/>
		<Line X1="0" X2="180" Y1="20" Y2="80" Stroke="Brown" StrokeThickness="2"/>
		<Path Data="M 50,10 L 100,80 L 30,90 L 60,70 Z M 40,20 L 20,40 L 30,60" Stroke="DarkGreen" StrokeThickness="2"/>
		<Polygon Points="20,20 60,60 60,100 140,80 120,40" Stroke="DarkViolet" StrokeThickness="2"/>
		<Polyline Points="20,20 60,60 60,100 140,80 120,40" Stroke="DarkViolet" StrokeThickness="2"/>
		<Rectangle Height="100" Width="180" Stroke="Crimson" StrokeThickness="2"/>

Here’s how these shapes look when rendered: