how to stop flickering C# winforms

Question

I have a program that is essentially like a paint application. However, my program has some flickering issues. I have the following line in my code (which should get rid of

Answer 1

Double buffering is not going to be of much help here I'm afraid. I ran into this a while ago and ended up adding a separate panel in a rather clumsy way but it worked for my application.

Make the original panel that you have ( panelArea ) a transparent area, and put it on top of a 2nd panel, which you call panelDraw for example. Make sure to have panelArea in front. I whipped this up and it got rid of the flickering, but left the shape that was being drawn smeared out so it's not a full solution either.

A transparent panel can be made by overriding some paint actions from the original panel:

public class ClearPanel : Panel
{
    public ClearPanel(){}

    protected override CreateParams CreateParams
    {
        get
        {
            CreateParams createParams = base.CreateParams;
            createParams.ExStyle |= 0x00000020;
            return createParams;
        }
    }

    protected override void OnPaintBackground(PaintEventArgs e){}
}

The idea is to handle drawing the temporary shape during the MouseMove event of the 'panelArea' and ONLY repaint the 'panelDraw' on the MouseUp Event.

// Use the panelDraw paint event to draw shapes that are done
void panelDraw_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
{
    Graphics g = panelDraw.CreateGraphics();

    foreach (Rectangle shape in listOfShapes)
    {
        shape.Draw(g);
    }
}

// Use the panelArea_paint event to update the new shape-dragging...
private void panelArea_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
{
    Graphics g = panelArea.CreateGraphics();

    if (drawSETPaint == true)
    {
        Pen p = new Pen(Color.Blue);
        p.DashStyle = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.DashStyle.Dash;

        if (IsShapeRectangle == true)
        {
            g.DrawRectangle(p, rect);
        }
        else if (IsShapeCircle == true)
        {
            g.DrawEllipse(p, rect);
        }
        else if (IsShapeLine == true)
        {
            g.DrawLine(p, startPoint, endPoint);
        }
    }
}

private void panelArea_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{

    endPoint.X = e.X;
    endPoint.Y = e.Y;

    drawSETPaint = false;

    if (rect.Width > 0 && rect.Height > 0)
    {
        if (IsShapeRectangle == true)
        {
            listOfShapes.Add(new TheRectangles(rect, currentColor, currentBoarderColor, brushThickness));
        }
        else if (IsShapeCircle == true)
        {
            listOfShapes.Add(new TheCircles(rect, currentColor, currentBoarderColor, brushThickness));
        }
        else if (IsShapeLine == true)
        {
            listOfShapes.Add(new TheLines(startPoint, endPoint, currentColor, currentBoarderColor, brushThickness));
        }

        panelArea.Invalidate();
    }

    panelDraw.Invalidate();
}