1) What you see in the real document on the screen is the ActiveX controls rendering themselves in their own windows by handling the Windows WM_PAINT message.

In order to render the controls on paper or exported bitmaps, FlowchartX expects the hosted controls to implement either the IViewObject->Draw method or IDataObject->GetData(CF_ENHMETAFILE) method. If they do not, there's nothing we can do to render the controls on paper / print preview / bitmap. You can see this working for example with the MSCAL.Calendar control.

If the fpSpread does not implement these methods, you could create a copy of the flowchart (e.g. call LoadFromString(SaveToString())) where the fpSpread controls are replaced with Table objects, and then use the copy to export to bitmap or print. If the fpSpread control has an export to bitmap method, another option could be to replace the fpSpread instances with Boxes that display the created bitmaps.

2) The Preview window is implemented by drawing WMF metafiles representing the pages, and unfortunately the WMF format does not support semi-transparency. It should look fine when printed though.

You cannot attach images here. You could upload them to your own server or some image-sharing service and link to it.

Stoyan

1) You can check if controls support these interfaces by calling the QueryInterface COM function. I'm not sure how it can be used in VB though. If QueryInterface returns an interface pointer of the specified type, then the control should have the respective methods implemented by the COM contract.

2) If these interfaces are implemented, there's nothing you should do. The flowchart will automatically use them to render the control on paper / the exported bitmap.

3) You could place a second flowchart on the form and call it "fcCopy", or load it dynamically. Then you can copy from the main flowchart to the copy like this:

dim fcdata as string
fcdata = fcMain.SaveToString(false)
fcCopy.LoadFromString fcdata
' replace spreads with tables in fcCopy...
fcCopy.PreviewDiagram

I hope that helps,
Stoyan

Thank you,

I will try to find the best way, as the application now is almost finished, but came this problem that makes me really confused.

Thanks again

Ok, if it supports the CF_ENHMETAFILE format, maybe we can make it work by swapping an if/else in our code. Currently it looks like this:

if (punk->QueryInterface(
	IID_IViewObject, (void**)&viewObj) == S_OK)
{
	RECTL rcl = { rect.left, rect.top, rect.right, rect.bottom };
	viewObj->Draw(DVASPECT_CONTENT,
	....
}
else
{
	// try getting metafile through IDataObject
	IDataObject* dataObj = NULL;
	if (punk->QueryInterface(
		IID_IDataObject, (void**)&dataObj) == S_OK)
	{
		FORMATETC etc;
		etc.cfFormat = CF_ENHMETAFILE;
		....
	} 

So apparently fpSpread returns OK when queried for support IViewObject, but viewObj->Draw does not work as expected. We'll upload a version that tries to get a metafile before calling IViewObject so you can check if it will work better.

Stoyan

Could you check if this version works any better?
https://mindfusion.eu/_beta/flowchartx32_emf.zip

It first tries to get a metafile image, and only if that fails it calls IViewObject->Draw.

Stoyan

Ok, our developer will check it when he has the time. Meanwhile you might try using that DataObject.GetData method to get a metafile for each spread and print the flowchart copy as suggested above.

By the way our preview/bitmap export code will work only if the hosted fpSpread object itself implements that IDataObject interface and the GetData method, and not its child object (fpSpread1.fpDataObject).

Stoyan

Our developer traced through the drawing code with the fpSpread trial, and found that the spread object itself does support IDataObject, but its GetData method returns false when asked for a metafile. Have you checked if the spread.DataObject property successfully creates metafiles? If it does, we could add an event that would let you return its IDataObject pointer, or the metafile's IPicture pointer, that FlowchartX could show in the preview window. Then you can avoid cloning the chart and replacing spreads with tables.

Stoyan