Question

I have a custom DrawingCanvas which is inherited from Canvas. When I add a ContentControl to DrawingCanvas with the following code nothing shows up.

GraphicsRectangle rect = new GraphicsRectangle(0, 0, 200, 200, 5, Colors.Blue);
DrawingContainer host = new DrawingContainer(rect);

ContentControl control = new ContentControl();
control.Width = 200;
control.Height = 200;
DrawingCanvas.SetLeft(control, 100);
DrawingCanvas.SetTop(control, 100);
control.Style = Application.Current.Resources["DesignerItemStyle"] as Style;

control.Content = host;

drawingCanvas.Children.Add(control);

GraphicsRectangle is a DrawingVisual and the constructor above draws a Rect with (0,0) top left point and length of 200 to the drawingContext of GraphicsRectangle. DrawingContainer is a FrameworkElement and it has one child, which is rect above, given with constructor. DrawingContainer implements GetVisualChild and VisualChildrenCount override methods. At last, Content property of ContentControl is set to the DrawingContainer to be able to show the DrawingVisual’s content.

When I add the created ContentControl to a regular Canvas, control is showed correctly. I guess the reason is that DrawingCanvas doesn’t implement ArrangeOverride method. It only implements MeasureOverride method. Also DrawingContainer doesn’t implement Measure and
Arrange override methods. Any ideas?

Answer 1

As I thought the problem was missing ArrangeOverride method in DrawingCanvas. With the following ArrangeOverride method added to DrawingCanvas, ContentControls are showed correctly.

protected override Size ArrangeOverride(Size arrangeSize)
{
    foreach (Visual child1 in children)
    {
        if (child1 is DrawingVisual)
            continue;

        ContentControl child = child1 as ContentControl;
        GraphicsBase content = ((DrawingContainer)(child.Content)).GraphicsObject;

        child.Arrange(new Rect(DrawingCanvas.GetLeft(child), DrawingCanvas.GetTop(child), content.Width, content.Height));
     }

     return arrangeSize;
}

where GraphicsBase is the base of the GraphicsRectangle class. In order to find the size of the GraphicsBase, I added width and height properties to GraphicsBase which are set in the constructor of GraphicsRectangle.