How to Create a Graphical Designer

I am looking for documentation or sample code on how to build a standalone GUI designer.

The basic functionality is

A tool box
A canvas that controls can be dropped onto and be (re)positioned and viewed at design time.
Property Explorer to set the various properties of a control

As this will eventually be used in a commercial product, please limit responses to tools/libraries/SDKs that are freely distributed.

Any help is appreciated.

Dave

lapo3399
Not specifically, but there may be an assembly that could be used that is also re-distributable that will meet my needs. Just trying to find information where I can.

Thanks.
jonathan seale
The extensibility guided tour, and the designer samples that are included in the documentation that comes with the SDK are the only documentation that may be relevant to your topic.
MollyBos -- MSFT

Is this integrated with VS

If not, how is this VS extensibility related
SimonQ

The following MSDN article and accompanying sample may be of some interest. It's an article detailing how to go about hosting the windows forms designer in a stand-along application.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/03/DesignerHosting/

Tim Dawson from DeveloperFusion has a pretty good write up on this as well at

http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/4351/1/

Sincerely,
casali-andrea
What extensibility guided tour

Which SDK

Thanks for the help

Dave
slo7h

Given we are on the VS Extensibility forum, we are talking about the VS SDK for extending VS, and the VS SDK Guided Tour on MSDN.

the VS SDK is downloadable from http://www.vsipmembers.com after registration.

the VS SDK Guided Tour on MSDN is available from

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp url=/library/en-us/Extensibility_Guided_Tour/Visual%20Studio%20Extensibility.asp

I am not sure how much they will help you for a standalone product, but they may give you ideas.
How to Create a Graphical Designer