Whats New in AddFlow 5.4?

• Custom polygonal shapes
• Custom drawings with the OwnerDraw events
• Gradient colors for nodes
• Link autorouting
• Rounded corners for polyline links
• JumpSize and RoundCornerSize properties allowing selecting the size of the link jumps and link rounded corners
• CanChangeOrg and CanChangeDst properties
• UndoNode, UndoLink, RedoNode, RedoLink properties
• BeforeChangeOrg and BeforeChangeDst events
• XMLFlow.ocx: a ocx control to load/save diagrams in XML
• New versions of HFlow, TFlow, SFlow
• A new graph layout control: OFlow (Orthogonal layout)
• A new version of PrnFlow

An AddFlow diagram is a set of objects that can be linked each other. The objects are called nodes and the lines that connect objects are called links.

AddFlow provides two ways to build diagrams:

• Interactive way (with the mouse): see the Quick Start of the help file in order to know how to interactively draw a diagram
• Programmatic way with the AddFlow API

Following is a list of the main AddFlow features. Note that all those features are encapsulated in a small (375 Kb only), robust, fast and easy to use ActiveX component.

General

• Runtime-royalty free
• Digitally signed
• Interactive and programmatic drawings
• Navigation (You can access every nodes and links of a diagram with just 5 properties)
• Collections support (nodes, links, selected nodes, selected links)
• Customization: many properties allowing to customize the control (CanDrawNode, CanMoveNode, ReadOnly, etc...)

Input/output

• Metafiles support (WMF, EMF)
• Serialisation of diagrams (LoadFile, SaveFile methods)
• XML serialisation
• Clipboard management
• Printing and print previewing

Interactivity

• Scrolling (interactive and programmatic)
• Autoscrolling
• Selection and Multiselection of nodes and links (interactive and programmatic)
• Nodes stay connected when moved or resized

Display facilities

• OwnerDraw event allowing customized drawings
• Zooming
• Grid support

Data

• Ability to associate a text, a unique key, a tooltip and a tag to a node or a link
• Nodes and links
• Change painting order of objects (ZOrder property)
• Distinct colors for each object (FillColor, ForeColor, DrawColor)
• Distinct fonts for each object
• Distinct drawing styles (DrawStyle property)
• Hidden objects

Links

• Stretchable links. A link can be composed of many segments
• Curved links (Bezier, Spline)
• Rigid links. If a link is rigid, it follows (without being stretched) its origin node when this origin node is being dragged
• Reflexive links
• Links having only vertical and horizontal segments
• Ability to adjust the position of the first and last point of a link
• 20 arrow styles for links
• Ability to customize the drawing of a link (OwnerDraw event)
• Link autorouting

Nodes

• Ability to associate a picture (bitmap, standard or enhanced metafile, icon, GIF, JPEG) to a node
• Ability to customize the drawing of a node (OwnerDraw event)
• 46 distinct shapes for nodes
• Custom shapes
• Transparent nodes
• Text alignment
• Autosize options for nodes
• Gradient color

Automatic graph layout

AddFlow does not directly provide any automatic graph layout feature. However we provide LayoutFlow, a set of four AddFlow graph layout controls:

• HFlow (hierarchical layout)
• OFlow (orthogonal layout)
• SFlow (symmetric force directed layout)
• TFlow (tree layout)

A demonstration of each of these products is available in the LayoutDemo sample.