Although Data Dynamics Reports provides a compiled Designer application that you can use independently, you may want to add a designer to a Windows form in Visual Studio. To use the UserDesignerControl component in your Visual Studio projects, you must first add it to the toolbox.

Note: The UserDesignerControl component is available only in Windows Application projects. In Web projects it appears disabled in the Visual Studio toolbox.

To add the UserDesignerControl to a Windows form

1. Open the tab of the toolbox to which you have added the component.
2. Select the UserDesignerControl in the Visual Studio toolbox and draw or drag it onto a form in your project. (You can alternatively double-click the control in the toolbox and it will appear at a default size on the form.)
3. To automatically resize the control with the form, in the Properties grid change the Dock property to Fill.
4. Run the project to see that it automatically provides the same functionality as the Reports Designer application (except for exporting from the Preview tab - see below).

To enable the Export button on the Preview tab

By default, the Export button on the Preview tab of the designer is disabled at run time. To add this functionality to your designer application, you must reference the export assemblies and add a copy of the datadynamics.reports.config file to the solution's bin folder (or bin\Debug folder in a C# project).

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click References and select Add Reference.
2. On the .NET tab of the Add Reference dialog, scroll down and double-click any or all of the component names listed in the table below to add them to the Selected Components list.

   Component Name	Export Description
   Data Dynamics Reports Graphics Rendering Extension	Rendering to Images
   Data Dynamics Reports HTML Rendering Extension	Rendering to HTML
   Data Dynamics Reports PDF Rendering Extension	Rendering to PDF
   Data Dynamics Reports Word Rendering Extension	Rendering to Word
   Data Dynamics Reports XML Rendering Extension	Rendering to XML

3. Click OK to add the selected components.
4. In the Solution Explorer, select each of the references in turn and set the CopyLocal property for each to True to ensure that the assemblies are distributed with your solution.
5. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files\Data Dynamics\Reports\your build number\Assemblies and copy datadynamics.reports.config.
6. Paste the file into your solution's bin folder (or bin\Debug folder in a C# project).

See Also