Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

Appendix N

Graphics

This appendix provides information about graphics classes used by Windows Forms applications.

GRAPHICS NAMESPACES

This section describes the most important graphics namespaces and their most useful classes, structures, and enumerated values.

System.Drawing

This namespace defines the most important graphics objects such as Graphics, Pen, Brush, Font, FontFamily, Bitmap, Icon, and Image. The following table describes the namespace’s most useful classes and structures.

CLASSES AND STRUCTURES	PURPOSE
Bitmap	Represents a bitmap image defined by pixel data.
Brush	Represents area fill characteristics.
Color	Defines a color’s red, green, blue, and alpha components as values between 0 and 255. Alpha = 0 means the object is transparent, and alpha = 255 means it is opaque.
Font	Represents a particular font (name, size, and style, such as italic or bold).
FontFamily	Represents a group of typefaces with similar characteristics.
Graphics	Represents a drawing surface. Provides methods to draw on the surface.
Icon	Represents a Windows icon.
Image	Abstract base class from which Bitmap, Icon, and Metafile inherit.
Metafile	Represents a graphic metafile that contains drawing commands (in contrast to rasterized bitmap data).
Pen	Represents line drawing characteristics such as color, thickness, and dash style.
Pens	Provides a large number of predefined pens with different colors and thickness 1.
Point	Defines a point’s X and Y coordinates.
PointF