Getting the graphic representation of my IltNetworkElement.Type

Question

How can I retrieve the graphic representation of the IltNetworkElement.Type to use it in an independant Java object?

Answer

You can access the network element type renderer factory using global settings IltSettings.GetValue(Object key).

When the network element is rendered using an image, its default renderer factory is an IltNEImageBaseRendererFactory object, and using the getSourceImageName() method of this class will give you the image location. You can then use this location to retrieve the image from the IltDefaultImageRepository object accessible from your IlpContext.

For instance,
  IltSettings.GetValue("NetworkElement.Type.IP_ComputerFlat.Renderer");
returns an IltNEImageBaseRendererFactory, which will give you the location of the image source that is being used for the network element type.

Now, this methodology works fine for network element types that use an image for rendering.

For other types that are rendering themselves directly through graphic primitives (for example, NetworkElement.Type.NE) the IltNEImageBaseRendererFactory is not used.

To overcome this, you can use the BufferedImage class together with the paint method of your graphic object, and dump to a graphic file the representation of each Network Element types that you want to use.

Example

BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(50, 50, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
Graphics g = image.getGraphics();
networkView.paint(g);
ImageIO.write(image, "jpg", new File("ne_type.jpg"));

This source code fragment demontrates the first methodology, using the IltSettings.GetValue() together with the IltNEImageBaseRendererFactory.getSourceImageName().