Question

Say I have a grid named ‘GridA’

everywhere i’ve searched suggests that i use

 GridA.DrawToBitmap

But grids don’t have that method..

And then i got crafty and wrapped it in a stackpanel and called ‘stackpanel1’

panels don’t have that method either.

So how should i go about saving my grid as an image in wpf ?

Answer 1

You can convert any Drawing Visual into a Bitmap. Here’s some code I use to add icon overlays from WPF drawn controls, add it to a UserControl or refactor it.
For a full example see http://alski.net/post/2012/01/11/WPF-Icon-Overlays.aspx

    protected void InitializeBitmapGeneration()
    {
            LayoutUpdated += (sender, e) => _UpdateImageSource();
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty ImageSourceProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
       "ImageSource",
       typeof(ImageSource),
       typeof(CountControl),
       new PropertyMetadata(null));

    /// <summary>
    /// Gets or sets the ImageSource property.  This dependency property 
    /// indicates ....
    /// </summary>
    public ImageSource ImageSource
    {
        get { return (ImageSource)GetValue(ImageSourceProperty); }
        set { SetValue(ImageSourceProperty, value); }
    }

    private void _UpdateImageSource()
    {
        if (ActualWidth == 0 || ActualHeight == 0)
        {
            return;
        }
        ImageSource = GenerateBitmapSource(this, 16, 16);
    }

    public static BitmapSource GenerateBitmapSource(ImageSource img)
    {
        return GenerateBitmapSource(img, img.Width, img.Height);
    }

    public static BitmapSource GenerateBitmapSource(ImageSource img, double renderWidth, double renderHeight)
    {
        var dv = new DrawingVisual();
        using (DrawingContext dc = dv.RenderOpen())
        {
            dc.DrawImage(img, new Rect(0, 0, renderWidth, renderHeight));
        }
        var bmp = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)renderWidth, (int)renderHeight, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Pbgra32);
        bmp.Render(dv);
        return bmp;
    }

    public static BitmapSource GenerateBitmapSource(Visual visual, double renderWidth, double renderHeight)
    {
        var bmp = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)renderWidth, (int)renderHeight, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Pbgra32);
        var dv = new DrawingVisual();
        using (DrawingContext dc = dv.RenderOpen())
        {
            dc.DrawRectangle(new VisualBrush(visual), null, new Rect(0, 0, renderWidth, renderHeight));
        }
        bmp.Render(dv);
        return bmp;
    }
}