Primitive shapes use the following class hierarchy:

As you can see the hierarchy of the primitive shapes closely follows the hierarchy of the implemented primitive models.

As there currently are two major types of primitive models - paths and texts - natively there are also two major types of primitive shapes - primitive path shapes and primitive text shapes.

Primitive shapes share the following set of common features:

All primitive shapes aggregate a single primitive model, which can be obtained from the Primitive property of the NPrimitiveShape class.

The aggregate primitive influences much of the primitive shape behavior. The following model aspects of a shape are actually inherited from the aggregate primitive model:

• Logical Line - the entire set of methods and properties related to the logical line of a primitive shape delegate to the primitive model implementation.
• Contour - the contour of a primitive shape is the contour of the primitive model, which it aggregates.
• Start and End points - if the primitive shape aggregates a 1D primitive model (such primitive, which has locally modifiable start and end points), the shape will delegate the implementation to it.

In case that the primitive shape aggregates a 1D primitive, you can specify whether the set implementation of the start and end points properties must use the base model implementation (which scales and rotates the model), or delegate the implementation to the primitive. This is specified by the PreserveForm property.

For example: Suppose that you have a bezier shape and you modify it's start and end points. In case the PreserveForm property is set to false, the second control point and third control point will remain the same - e.g. you will change the form of the bezier curve, because you will actually change the start point of the bezier curve model definition. In case the PreserveForm property is set to true, the bezier shape will get scaled and rotated (e.g transformed). This will not alter the model definition of the bezier curve shape - e.g. the form of the shape will be preserved.

Text shapes are represented by instances of the NTextShape class. Text shapes aggregate a single NTextPrimitive instance. Text shapes help you display wrapped and stretched text. The text display mode is controlled by the Mode property, which naturally delegates the implementation to the contained NTextPrimitive.

NTextShape is the only shape in the DOM, which does not create a default label. This is done because the NTextShape can already display text via it's primitive. The Text property of the NTextShape is hence modifying the text of the contained text primitive, not the default label.

See Texts for more information.

The base class for all primitive shapes, which aggregate a single path primitive is the NPathShape abstract class. The NPathShape class implements the INPoints interface and by default delegate the implementation to the contained path primitive (note that all path primitives implement the INPoints interface).

The base class for all path shapes, which aggregate a single polypath primitive is the NPolyPathShape abstract class. The NPolyPathShape class implements the INPolyPoints and INSegments interfaces and by default delegate the implementation to the contained poly path primitive (note that all poly path primitives implement these interfaces).

The following table summarizes the currently available instancable path shapes:

Windows Forms: Document Object Model - Shapes - Primitive 2D Shapes
Windows Forms: Document Object Model - Shapes - Primitive 1D Shapes
Windows Forms: Document Object Model - Shapes - Text Shape
Windows Forms: Document Object Model - Shapes - Step and Arrow Connectors