Rendering 2D primitives in scrollable view

Question

What is the best approach to render a large number of 2D graphical elements (lines, text, shapes, etc.) in a scrollable view on windows using C#?

Answer 1

You could put a PictureBox (of whatever overall size required) onto a Panel with AutoScroll set to True, and then draw everything you need at once onto the PictureBox using a Graphics object.

However, if the overall size of the drawing surface is extremely large, this approach would not be practical (since it would mean having a huge PictureBox and a correspondingly huge Bitmap, which could consume a large amount of memory). If this were the case, you'd be better off creating your own scrollable user control (horizontal and vertical) and rendering only the visible portion of the overall surface in the control's Paint event.

The first approach would be easier and faster to write, but might consume too much memory. The second approach would require more work on your part, but would minimize memory consumption.