Question

I’m looking for some simple clip art to use in a WPF application. I’d like it to be vector-based so it scales well, so obviously I would need to be able to convert it to XAML. Most of the clip art out there is raster graphics.

My current method is to find a .wmf piece of clip art, paste it into Adobe Illustrator, copy it to the clipboard, paste it into Expression Design and then export it to XAML. There’s got to be a better way!

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

Try http://www.openclipart.org/ for free, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) clip art. Then, you can convert the SVG files to XAML for WPF in Illustrator.

There also appear to be some free tools that do this without Illustrator (do a Google Search; the ones that I have picked out are This Thread on MSDN and Ab2d.ReaderSvg – svg and svgz importer – a tool that allows you to load up svg files directly into WPF and “import its elements as WPF UIElements – Canvases, Paths and other shapes. Elements Stroke and Fill data are also imported.”. It looks very promising. This way you do not have to convert to XAML each time – a great time saver.

There also seems to be another project ViewerSvg that allows you to “Draw the whole user interface or just some of its elements of your WPF application in your favorite vector drawing application”

Finally, there is Michael Swanson’s Windows Presentation Foundation Tools and Controls, a great resource about tools to use for WPF development.