Drawing with xml

Question

Hi everybody,
i am wondering what is the best and most efficient way to draw shapes in flex.
I want to show a map with 3000 rectangles placed after downloading their position in a xml. I would like to zoom this map and to pan it.
I have done it in flash, it is actually a movieClip where I place every rectangle and a mask which let appear the map as a window.
it is ressource consuming and it lags.
I would like to know if Flex provide a simple way to draw and place such shapes.
Best

Answer 1

Hi,
Thank you for your answer. I actually found the solution in Flash itself. It is way better to draw the rectangles with the graphics classe than to add lot of movie clip instances on the scene. Indeed, if you draw the shapes you can then use the function cashAsBitmap which allows you to pan easily the map without lagging since flash doesn't redraw all the movie clips. Apparently it works less well with complete movieClips.
Concerning the zoom algorithm, which zoom on mouse wheel and center the zoom on the pointer (google earth style), be careful, I waste a lot of time trying to understand what was the error. Actually, when you add a flash movie in flex, the "stage" is completely different knowing that the full window becomes your stage, you have then to recalculate everything when a scale is applied to the flash movie.
Notice that :
the movieClip has its self width and height
then added to flex it has a new width and height depending of your importation parameters
then it is included in many movieClip (to see them just trace myMoveClip.parent.name)
and the stage is no more the movieClip stage but the whole application stage.
Then when it comes to center the map after the zoom you have to change referentials (containers) coordinates.
Best