How to use Enumerations

Return to index

How to use Enumerations

The use of Enumerations (also known as "enumerated types") is very important because gives more readability to your code: for this purpose we have provided a set of public Enumerations.

Here follows the full list of Enumerations with the associated properties; in order to see the values defined by the Enumerations and to understand their meaning, click the associated property:

Enumerated type	Related properties

Ctl3d.Shapes	Shape
Ctl3d.Surfaces	Surface
Ctl3d.SpecialEffects	SpecialEffect
Ctl3d.FrameEffects	FrameEffect
Ctl3d.TranspModes	PictureTranspMode
Ctl3d.Grades	Slant and FlatPillowFactor
Ctl3d.SpecialEffectsFactors	SpecialEffectFactor
Ctl3d.Orientations	Orientation
Ctl3d.Smooths	SmoothEdges
Ctl3d.ShadowModes	ShadowMode
Ctl3d.TextEffects	TextDescriptor.SpecialEffect
Ctl3d.ColorRenderType	SurfaceColor.Render3DType
Ctl3d.ColorGradientType	SurfaceColor.GradientType
Ctl3d.TextureModes	Texture.Mode
Ctl3d.CaptionAlign	TextCaptionAlignment
Ctl3d.FocusModes	FocusMode
Ctl3d.PictPositions	PicturePosition
Ctl3d.ExportImage	ExportBtnImage method
Ctl3d.ExportFormat	ExportBtnImage method
Ctl3d.Sounds	EnableSound and SetSoundSync methods
Ctl3d.TplBinTypes	SetTemplateBinDir method
Ctl3d.Pictures	SetPictureFromHandle and CellsManager.SetPictureFromHandle methods
Ctl3d.TranspZones	SurfaceTransparentZone
Ctl3d.LightDirections	LightDirection
Ctl3d.HorzAlign	Cellsmanager.TextHorzAlign and Cellsmanager.PictureHorzAlign
Ctl3d.VertAlign	Cellsmanager.TextVertAlign and Cellsmanager.PictureVertAlign

Here follows a brief sample of the operations needed in order to make use of Enumerations in your code inside the various development environments we have used to test our control; the samples suppose that you have inserted one instance of the control (named MyControl) inside a form and, at runtime inside the Form_Load subroutine, you need to change its shape from the Rectangle default to Ellipse.

Microsoft Visual Basic.NET

With this environment we can easily use the IntelliSense features that will help us assigning the correct value to the Shape property; after having inserted the code

press the '=' character on your keyboard and you will see the IntelliSense display the listbox of the possible values that can be assigned to the Shape property

select the Ctl3d.Shapes.Ellipse value so the complete line of code will be:

MyControl.Shape = Ctl3d.Shapes.Ellipse

Microsoft Visual C#.NET

Inside this environment the IntelliSense features are less powerful than inside VB.NET, so we need a couple of line of code that were not needed with the previous environment; first of all we need to insert the following line of code at the beginning of the form management file

this line of code will add the to the existing namespaces our component namespace.

After having inserted the code

you will see that pressing the '=' character, unfortunately no IntelliSense will be displayed: we need to help the environment with a further information about the kind of value we want to enter; the Shape property, as you will see inside the table at the beginning of this section, is associated to the Ctl3d.Shapes enumerated type, so let's try to enter some more character inside our line of code; after having inserted the code

MyControl.Shape = Shapes // Ctl3d. is not needed because we have already "using Ctl3d;"

press the dot '.' character and you will see the IntelliSense display the listbox of the values declared inside the Ctl3d.Shapes enumerated type

select the Shapes.Ellipse value so the complete line of code will be:

MyControl.Shape = Shapes.Ellipse;

Microsoft Visual J#.NET

Also with this environment, with some difference, we can use the IntelliSense features; after having inserted the code

you will see that pressing the dot '.' character the IntelliSense will display the available wrapper functions to access the properties of the control; in our case we must scroll until we find the set_Shape function as displayed on the image below:

as you can see, the tooltip on the right of the listbox helps us understanding which enumerated type must be assigned to the property, so let's go ahead with the line of code

MyControl.set_Shape (Ctl3d.Shapes

press the dot '.' character and you will see the IntelliSense display the listbox of the values declared inside the Ctl3d.Shapes enumerated type

select the Ellipse value so the complete line of code will be:

MyControl.set_Shape (Ctl3d.Shapes.Ellipse);