>How can I display and edit dxf format in Delphi? Can I draw it with >canvas?
As I understand it, DXF is a text file format used by AutoCad to represent a vector drawing. The vector drawing format supported by the Windows operating system WMF (Windows Meta File). You can draw a complete WMF file on a canvas with a single call. So, to draw the DXF file on a canvas, you could use someone elses software to convert it to a WMF file and just draw it. Use Google with this search: dxf convert wmf and you will find a lot of options, some of which are free. If you need to be able to edit the DXF, you could write a graphical editor, save the file to WMF and then convert from WMF to DXF. The above is a straightforward "easy" way to do what you describe; although, writing the graphical editor is non-trivial. The way I would probably want to deal with this problem is to write a parser for the DXF format. Here is a link to reference docs on the DXF format: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=8446698 The approach would be to write a parser that reads the DXF file and populates a structure that represents all the entities contained in the file in a form that can be easily traversed and drawn on a canvas. To modify the DXF, you could write a DXF generator that traverses your data structure and writes out DXF. Editing a DXF file then consists of reading in a DXF file, modifying your internal entity structure to perform the edits, then writing out the DXF file. Note that this general approach makes it straightforward to support other formats as well. Glenn Lawler www.incodesystems.com
