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Lesson 1 - Load Image Tiles to a Map

  • 5 minutes to read

This step-by-step tutorial describes how to connect a map to the Bing Maps imagery service and load image tiles. It also shows how to configure main map settings like the center point and zoom level.

Lesson1_Result

Step 1. Add a Map Control

In this step, you are performing the common actions required to add a Map control to your application.

  • Run Visual Studio.
  • Create a new Windows Forms Application project by selecting File | New | Project… in the main menu of Visual Studio, and in the invoked New Project menu, select Windows Forms Application.
  • Add the MapControl component to your project.

    To do this, locate the MapControl item in the Toolbox in the DX.24.1: Data & Analytics tab and drop it onto the form.

    MapToolbox

  • Click the Map control’s smart tag to invoke its actions list. In the Actions list, clicking the Dock in Parent Container link allows the Map control to occupy all of the available space on the form.

    Lesson1_DockMap

  • After docking the Map control, it appears as follows:

    Lesson1_MapOnWinForm

  • Sometimes, you may need to show a specific area on a map. To do this, set the required value to the MapControl.CenterPoint property.

    For example, set the MapControl.CenterPoint property value to 45,18. When an image layer is added to a MapControl, Europe is in the center of the map.

    Lesson1_MapCenterPoint

  • To specify the current zoom level for all map layers, use the MapControl.ZoomLevel property (set its value to 4).

    Lesson1_ZoomLevel

You have now added a Map control to your application. In the next section, it describes how to connect this control to an image tiles data provider.

Step 2. Connect to an Images Provider

The Map control can display multiple layers to draw images or vector elements. To load images from a certain image provider, use the ImageLayer object. It is necessary to draw the map.

In this lesson, the Bing Maps image tiles provider is used.

Note

It is possible to use the OpenStreetMap image tiles provider, the WMS provider, or to load image tiles from the local directory. Refer to the following topics for more information:

The Map control provides two ways of connecting to the Bing Maps provider: manual and automatic. Here they are in greater detail:

Manually Connect to the Bing Maps Provider

You can add an image layer and bind it to the Bing Maps service by performing the following steps:

  • Select the Click here to add layer link on the MapControl surface.
  • Locate the Image Layer item in the invoked list.
  • Select the Connect to Bing Maps item to obtain map images from the Bing Maps service for the layer.

    map-visual-tree-menu

Automatically Connect to the Bing Maps Provider

  • Connect to the Bing Maps data provider using the Connect to Bing Maps link in the map’s smart tag tasks, as shown below. This allows you to connect to the map control automatically.

    Lesson1_ConnectToBingMapslink

Note

Refer to How to: Get a Bing Maps Key if you run the application and see a window with the following error message: “The specified Bing Maps key is invalid. To create a developer account, refer to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/create-a-bing-maps-key“.

Step 3. Customize an Images Provider

The BingMapDataProvider object should be configured before use by doing the following:

Step 4. Adding a Mini Map

Sometimes, you may need to show a mini map. For this, do the following:

Map control customization is complete.

Results

Run the application to see the result.

Lesson1_Result

Next Steps

Lesson 2 - Load a Vector Cartesian Map
This tutorial explains how to show vector shapes in the Cartesian coordinate system.
GIS Data
This topic lists GIS services that allow you to receive information related to map locations.
Vector Items
This topic explains how to show map vector shapes over the map. For example, you can show map pushpins over the geographical map created in this tutorial.
See Also