"ray well" wrote:

> hi,
>
> i need to give the user the ability to extract a rectangular area of their
> choice from a graphic displayed in a picture box to the clipboard, so they
> can use it elsewhere.
>
> say the graphic has an image of a house with a door in it and the user is
> interested in the door. the rectangle is selected by placing the mouse on
> the upper left corner of the door, pressing down on the left mouse button,
> and draging it to the lower right corner of the door and releasing the
> mouse. from the time the mouse is down till when the mouse is up, a light
> rectangle surrounds the selected area. the surrounding rectangle grows and
> shrinks as the dragging of the mouise moves. the user indicates his choice
> by releasing the mouse and letting it go up, whereupon the area selected by
> the rectangle is placed upon the clipboard.
>
> i don't have much experience with graphics but i was able to figure out part
> of the solution, but i'm missing part of it.
>
> here is what i tried
>
> i declared 4 form level integers, miTop, miLeft, miBottom, miRight, all of
> which are set to -1 when the form loads.
>
> in the picturebox during the mouse down event, miLeft is set to e.X, and
> miTop to e.Y
>
> during the mouse move event if miTop, miLeft are not -1, miRight is set to
> e.X and miBottom is set to e.Y, and the bounding rectangle is drawn with the
> following code in the mouse move event
>
> Dim ev As PaintEventArgs
>
> pic_Paint(sender, ev)
>
> the pic_Paint is as follows
>
> Private Sub pic_Paint(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As
> System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs) Handles pic.Paint
>
> Dim gr As Graphics = Me.pic.CreateGraphics
>
> dim iWidth, iHeight as integer
>
> iWidth = miRight - miLeft
>
> iHeight = miBottom - miTop
>
> 'MY PROBLEM IS RIGHT HERE, BECAUSE I HAVE TO REMOVE A PREVIOUS SURROUNDING
> RECTANGLE (IF THERE IS ONE) BEFORE MAKING THE NEXT LARGER OR SMALLER ONE
>
> 'OTHERWISE THE RECTANGLES JUST KEEP MULTIPLYING, AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO
> REMOVE A PREVIOUS BOUNDING RECTANGLE AND RETURN THE IMAGE TO ITS
>
> 'FORMER STATE, I CAN'T JUST MAKE A RECTANGLE WITH A BACKGROUND COLOR, I NEED
> TO LEAVE THE IMAGE CLEAN AS IT IS
>
> gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Gray, Me.miLeft, Me.miTop, iWidth, iHeight)    'this
> draws the rectangle
>
> End Sub
>
>
>
>
>
> in the mouse up event i need to do 2 things, extract the surrounded area,
> and place it on the clipboard
>
> i don't know how to do the extraction. i can extract to a invisible
> PictueBox picHidden which i would size to extracted rectangle's size and set
> its SizeMode to Normal, but i don't know the code to do the extraction.
>
> i then can place the rectangle on the clipboad with
>
> Clipboard.SetDataObject(Me.picHIdden.Image)
>
>
>
>
>
> in summary i don't know the code to do 2 things. 1) remove a  rectangle
> drawn on graphic and return the graphic to its former state without
> reloading the image, 2) how to extract a rectangle from a PictureBox.Image
>
>
>
> thanks for any code and help, or if there is better way to do what i need to
> do
>
>
>
> ray
>
>
>
>
>
>
>