Is it possible to rotate a picture box without C# code on the Form Designer or change shape of picture box border?

Question

I am very new to C# and WinForms. I am trying to create a segmented display where certain segments turn on and off (Using Microsoft Visual Studio 2015).

Right now I am placing picture boxes with segments I cropped and removed the background on in GIMP and it works fine so long as the segments are far enough away from each other, or are perfectly square.

When they overlap, with setting the picture box background transparent, the picture box is transparent straight through another picture box and just shows the background of the form window where the rectangular picture box is covering.

I tried two different things:

1. Changing default rectangular shape of picture box to any shape I can draw; not really sure how to do it and i don't think it is possible

2. Adding a bunch of picture boxes with a dark black picture and then rotating them and moving them to the correct position and turning them on when the particular segment comes on to cover up the problem. However, I don't think I can, or know how to just rotate an entire picture box when I am placing it? I have seen some code online on rotating picture boxes in C# but I am not sure how to implement it. I feel like with anything else there has to be a rotate option I am just missing.

Attached is a picture of the problem, notice how I sent the segment (line) to the back and the SMS quote image to the front. The dotted lines are the picture boxes:

Answer 1

The winforms designer does not have features for real UX design. It's mainly targeted for designing simple UI for data oriented application. You will not find any advanced features. You can resize the controls, align them, moving between containers.

There are advanced ways, how to change the shape of controls. But it is not available in winforms designer.

The transparency in winforms is fake. Actualy the transparency means "I'll show the background color of my parent". If you want "true transparency" you must draw the other controls as the background image of target control.

Answer 2

You can use a WPF project to accomplish what you want. It is much more flexible than WinForms. Plus it supports true transparency. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but if you're just starting out, I think you would be better served to start with WPF.

You can rotate an Image (PictureBox) in WPF as follows:

<Window x:Class="WpfApplication.Window1"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Title="Window1" Height="467" Width="616">
    <Grid>
        <Image Source="C:\MyFolder\MyImage.gif">
            <Image.LayoutTransform>
                <RotateTransform Angle="45" />
            </Image.LayoutTransform>
        </Image>
    </Grid>
</Window>