Joining Lines

A line join is the common area that is formed by two lines whose ends meet or overlap. Windows GDI+ provides four line join styles: miter, bevel, round, and miter clipped. Line join style is a property of the Pen class. When you specify a line join style for a pen and then use that pen to draw a path, the specified join style is applied to all the connected lines in the path.

You can specify the line join style by using the Pen::SetLineJoin method of the Pen class. The following example demonstrates a beveled line join between a horizontal line and a vertical line:

GraphicsPath path;
Pen penJoin(Color(255, 0, 0, 255), 8);

path.StartFigure();
path.AddLine(Point(50, 200), Point(100, 200));
path.AddLine(Point(100, 200), Point(100, 250));

penJoin.SetLineJoin(LineJoinBevel);
graphics.DrawPath(&penJoin, &path);

The following illustration shows the resulting beveled line join.

In the preceding example, the value (LineJoinBevel) passed to the Pen::SetLineJoin method is an element of the LineJoin enumeration.