VB.NET Cartesian Coordinate System - vb.net

Question

I'd like to make a Cartesian Coordinate System in a Windows form and be able to plot (x,y) coordinates in it.
How do i do this? I already did my research but unfortunately i only land on "charts" and not the Cartesian plane.
Any links regarding my problem will help ... thanks ...

Answer 1

In WinForms, you can use a PictureBox control and then draw on it using primitives such as DrawLine, DrawEllipse, etc. The following SO question contains an example:
how to draw drawings in picture box
In WPF, you can use a Canvas control similarly:
WPF canvas drawing with Graphics
If you want automatic axes and labeling, Charts are indeed the way to go. For your use case, a point chart seems like the right solution:
Point Chart (Chart Controls)

Answer 2

You should create a custom UserControl and use the Paint even to draw on the surface of the control. The Paint event provides you with a Graphics object which you can use to draw the graph. The big thing to know, however, is that you will need to swap your Y axis. In windows, the top-left of the screen is 0,0 rather than the bottom-left.
So, for instance, the following code will draw the x and y axis of a graph on a contorl:
Public Class CartesianGraph
Public Property BottomLeftExtent() As Point
Get
Return _bottomLeftExtent
End Get
Set(ByVal value As Point)
_bottomLeftExtent = value
End Set
End Property
Private _bottomLeftExtent As Point = New Point(-100, -100)
Public Property TopRightExtent() As Point
Get
Return _topRightExtent
End Get
Set(ByVal value As Point)
_topRightExtent = value
End Set
End Property
Private _topRightExtent As Point = New Point(100, 100)
Private Sub CartesianGraph_Paint(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs) Handles Me.Paint
Dim extentHeight As Integer = _topRightExtent.Y - _bottomLeftExtent.Y
Dim extentWidth As Integer = _topRightExtent.X - _bottomLeftExtent.X
If (extentHeight <> 0) And (extentWidth <> 0) Then
If (_bottomLeftExtent.Y <= 0) And (_topRightExtent.Y >= 0) Then
Dim xAxis As Integer = e.ClipRectangle.Height - (_bottomLeftExtent.Y * -1 * e.ClipRectangle.Height \ extentHeight)
e.Graphics.DrawLine(New Pen(ForeColor), 0, xAxis, e.ClipRectangle.Width, xAxis)
End If
If (_bottomLeftExtent.X <= 0) And (_topRightExtent.X >= 0) Then
Dim yAxis As Integer = e.ClipRectangle.Width * _bottomLeftExtent.X * -1 \ extentWidth
e.Graphics.DrawLine(New Pen(ForeColor), yAxis, 0, yAxis, e.ClipRectangle.Height)
End If
End If
End Sub
End Class

Answer 3

.NET has a charting library, but there are a few open source projects that do this sort of thing quite well. If you want to plot coordinates Zedgraph makes this relatively easy and is quite flexible.
this ZedGraph Example gives a great introduction
Dynamic Data Display is also worth looking at, but it is WPF, not Windows Forms