WPF - How can I make a brush that paints graph-paper-like squares?
from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480159.aspx
<DrawingBrush Viewport="0,0,10,10" ViewportUnits="Absolute" TileMode="Tile"> <DrawingBrush.Drawing> <DrawingGroup> <GeometryDrawing Geometry="M0,0 L1,0 1,0.1, 0,0.1Z" Brush="Green" /> <GeometryDrawing Geometry="M0,0 L0,1 0.1,1, 0.1,0Z" Brush="Green" /> </DrawingGroup> </DrawingBrush.Drawing></DrawingBrush>
Use a DrawingBrush. A Drawing can contain shapes, images, text, and media.
The following example uses a DrawingBrush to paint the Fill of a Rectangle.
Rectangle exampleRectangle = new Rectangle();exampleRectangle.Width = 75;exampleRectangle.Height = 75;// Create a DrawingBrush and use it to// paint the rectangle.DrawingBrush myBrush = new DrawingBrush();GeometryDrawing backgroundSquare = new GeometryDrawing( Brushes.White, null, new RectangleGeometry(new Rect(0, 0, 100, 100)));GeometryGroup aGeometryGroup = new GeometryGroup();aGeometryGroup.Children.Add(new RectangleGeometry(new Rect(0, 0, 50, 50)));aGeometryGroup.Children.Add(new RectangleGeometry(new Rect(50, 50, 50, 50)));LinearGradientBrush checkerBrush = new LinearGradientBrush();checkerBrush.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(Colors.Black, 0.0));checkerBrush.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(Colors.Gray, 1.0));GeometryDrawing checkers = new GeometryDrawing(checkerBrush, null, aGeometryGroup);DrawingGroup checkersDrawingGroup = new DrawingGroup();checkersDrawingGroup.Children.Add(backgroundSquare);checkersDrawingGroup.Children.Add(checkers);myBrush.Drawing = checkersDrawingGroup;myBrush.Viewport = new Rect(0, 0, 0.25, 0.25);myBrush.TileMode = TileMode.Tile;exampleRectangle.Fill = myBrush;
Source: MSDN: WPF Brushes Overview
You can do this in XAML using a VisualBrush. As a sample to give you a starting point, here is a blog post that uses VisualBrush to create a hatched brush. It's very close to a grid - and would be fairly easy to convert across.