Custom tool for Mapinfo

Question

I'm new to Mapinfo and Mapbasic as well. I need to build a tool like in ArcMap (pythonaddins). The goal is to have a gui application which has three dropdown lists. First is a list of layers in workspace. Second one is a set of fields inside the selected table This Third is a list of values that have to be written in a specific field (according to selected features).

I already discovered that Mapbasic can make dialog windows but things that I tested were working for one time while I needed a tool to be like an instrument which will stay always in Mapinfo window. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you are looking for at dialog/window that stays on the screen but doesn't prevent you from working with your map and data, you need to build your dialog/window using a different development language than MapBasic.

MapBasic only allows you to build modal dialogs.

I'd recommend building a non-modal dialog using for example C# and call this from your MapBasic application.

Alternatively, I'd recommend that you take a look at the source code for the NamedViews tool. You can find the code here in the MapBasic installation folder: Samples\DOTNET\NAMEDVIEWS.

This gives you an example on how to build a custom control and show this in a dockable panel inside MapInfo Pro. Again, you will need to use C# or VB.NET. Both examples are included with the source code.