How to add icon near string for compartment item of CompartmentShape

Question

How to add icon near string for compartment item of CompartmentShape

Alex Mak 66

Hello.

Please help, i have a situation:

Create domain-specific language project type in VS 2022
Then, i create my domain classes and shapes

here is picture of my setup:

User's image

As you can see - i have "Town" domain class, "Street" domain class and "TownCompartmentShape" compartmentShape and inside this shape i created Compartment field "Methods". And it works fine and i get "Town" (which is compartment shape like) and list of streets.

here is the picture of result:

User's image

And as you can see it works fine, but - i want to show little picture before name of each street, and I still can't figure it out - how to do this...

I tryed to create GeometryShape for "Street" domain class and connect "Street" to "StreetGeometryShape" but as a result i get one more rectangle with street name.

What is the best way to control drawing of each street? or what is the best way to specify picture before street name?

Please help.

Alex Mak 66 Reputation points

2025-11-04T10:30:36.8966667+00:00

maybe there is the way to create custom Shape? but how to add it on DSL Designer?

Answer accepted by question author

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Alex Mak 66 Reputation points

2025-11-04T10:30:36.8966667+00:00

maybe there is the way to create custom Shape? but how to add it on DSL Designer?

Answer 1

Varsha Dundigalla(INFOSYS LIMITED) 3,480 Microsoft External Staff

Thank you for reaching out.

You can add an icon before each compartment item by customizing the paint logic of the compartment. The correct way is to override the PaintItem method in the generated compartment class (derived from ElementListCompartment). This method is called for each item, so you can draw an image and then the text.

Example syntax:


protected override void PaintItem(Graphics g, Rectangle bounds, int index)
{
    Image icon = Properties.Resources.MyStreetIcon; // your icon
    g.DrawImage(icon, bounds.Left, bounds.Top);
    bounds.X += icon.Width + 4; // shift text
    base.PaintItem(g, bounds, index);
}

Why this works: DSL Tools allow custom rendering by overriding paint methods. Creating a new GeometryShape won’t help because compartments don’t support embedded shapes. Overriding PaintItem is the simplest and supported approach.

Reference:

Here are the correct Microsoft Learn links for your scenario:

These pages explain how to customize compartment shapes, override paint logic, and extend DSL projects in Visual Studio.

Please let us know if you require any further assistance, we’re happy to help.

If you found this information useful, kindly mark this as "Accept Answer".

Alex Mak 66 Reputation points

2025-11-04T12:08:01.99+00:00

Thanks for answer, but there is no PaintItem in ElementListCompartment class!!!

and there is also no PainItem in CompartmentShape class:

Maybe i missed something?
Varsha Dundigalla(INFOSYS LIMITED) 3,480 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-11-05T10:51:47.5233333+00:00

Thank you for reaching out.

You’re right PaintItem isn’t part of the public API in DSL Tools. The correct approach is to override OnPaintShape in your CompartmentShape partial class because that’s the extensibility point for custom drawing. After calling the base method to render the default shape, you manually draw the icons and text for each compartment item using the Graphics object provided in the paint event. This works because DSL Tools doesn’t expose per-item hooks, so the entire shape paint cycle is where you inject custom rendering.

Please let us know if you require any further assistance, we’re happy to help.

If you found this information useful, kindly mark this as "Accept Answer".
Varsha Dundigalla(INFOSYS LIMITED) 3,480 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-11-10T13:18:59.0566667+00:00

Hope you're doing well. Could you please let us know if the issue still persists or if it has been resolved? If everything is working fine now, we’d appreciate it if you could mark the response as answered. We’re planning to close the thread by 14 November, so we are hoping for your reply before that.
Varsha Dundigalla(INFOSYS LIMITED) 3,480 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-11-13T14:07:05.69+00:00

Hope you're doing well. Could you please let us know if the issue still persists or if it has been resolved? If everything is working fine now, we’d appreciate it if you could mark the response as answered.
Varsha Dundigalla(INFOSYS LIMITED) 3,480 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-11-14T12:15:27.04+00:00

Thank you for your response. We will now proceed with closing the thread as per your confirmation. If you encounter any further issues, please feel free to raise a new thread.

Answer 2

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How to add icon near string for compartment item of CompartmentShape

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