#1,169 – Custom Panel, part I (Measure and Arrange)

You can create a class that derives from Panel in order to create a panel control with custom behavior.  You typically override the following two methods in your custom panel:

• MeasureOverride – You call Measure method on each child element to determine how much space they need, then return the total space needed
• ArrangeOverride – You call Arrange method for each child element to position them

Below is a very simple example–a panel that does nothing in either its MeasureOverride or ArrangeOverride methods.  We’ll build on this class in future posts.

    public class MyPanel : Panel
    {
        protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
        {
            Size measuredSize = base.MeasureOverride(availableSize);
            return measuredSize;
        }

        protected override Size ArrangeOverride(Size finalSize)
        {
            Size arrangedSize = base.ArrangeOverride(finalSize);
            return arrangedSize;
        }
    }

If we add children to this panel, they will not be displayed. Below is debug output at run-time. MeasureOverride returns (0,0) because we haven’t calculated any sizes.