Date: 06.09.2015
(© by LMD Innovative, (http://www.lmd.de or http://www.lmdinnovative.com)

Introduction

LMD DesignPack is a collection of 10 native VCL components that can be compiled into your application royalty free. It contains controls which help you to enhance your projects with advanced designing features - either by adding object inspector like controls, extended form designers or diagram like objects.

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• Compatible with Delphi and C++ Builder XE2 - 10 Seattle, including 64bit support for Delphi XE2 and higher!
• Supported IDEs:
• Delphi 6 - Delphi 10 Seattle
• C++ Builder 6 - C++Builder 10 Seattle
• Delphi 2005.NET - Delphi 2007.NET
• Turbo (2006) Professional versions for Delphi, C++ and Delphi.NET
• All corresponding Studio Products (BDS 2006, CRS 2007, CRS 2009, RAD Studio 2010, XE, XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, XE6, XE7 etc.)
• Documentation: Includes online help files for Delphi/C++ Builder integration.
• Operating System and hardware requirements depend on the installed Delphi/C++ Builder version.
• Supported operating systems: Win98 and WinNT4 or better (including Windows 7 + 8). 

For recent Delphi releases LMD VCL package support same platforms as the VCL which is included in the IDE (e.g. Delphi 2009 officially supports Win2k or better only)

• 10 components for adding design features to your applications
• Provides object inspector like component, form designer and diagram based controls
• TLMDDesignManager control: Connect designer control(s) with object combobox/property inspector to set up designable forms with almost no code
• TLMDObjectComboBox control: Delphi object inspector like object combo box
• Support of ASCII/binary DFM format for saving/restoring form data
• Advanced architecture to integrate DesignPack with LMD ScriptPack and LMD IDE-Tools
• Full sourcecode of library
• Extensive demo projects demonstrating advanced features - even a report designer is basically included!
• Free updates via Internet 
• A Site License covers unlimited number of developers in same organization at one location
• Free technical support via public forum (forum.lmd.de), e-mail, fax or mail;
• Also available as part of LMD IDE-Tools or LMD VCL Complete

New in version 4

• Unicode support for NT-based systems!
• Support for Frames and Frame children - including saving/loading roots with frame-copies and inherited from base-frame event handlers. Most notable feature is capability to load forms with frames at run-time without creation of dummy frame instances.
• Alignment lines support for design areas - helpful feature to align controls when they are moved or sized (even possible when controls are inserted).
• The Designer control supports now saving/restoring of Lock state.
• Component captions for non-visual controls
• The designer supports grouping of controls. to handle compound controls as single object (which can be moved/resized/deleted).
• The TLMDServiceProvider component represent services architecture for simplifying development of extensible applications.
• And other minor new helpful additions like predefined form for representing the structure of a design module or integration code for LMD IDE-Tools support. E.g. designer, property inspector and component tree components now have the ability to display useful default popup menus. Also they can just link popup menu components by adding default items automatically. This feature is used to fill popup menu with Delphi like component editor verbs in designer and component tree.
• Combined helpfile for all IDE-Tools packages (IDE Integration package, Designpack, ScriptPack and SyntaxEdit).

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Component Overview

Tab "LMD Design"
	TLMDDBDiagramm The TLMDDBDiagram class represents a more specialized variant of TLMDDiagram component. It is usually used to visualize relationships of database tables, similar to the table relationship diagrams e.g. known from MS Access.
	TLMDDiagram The TLMDDiagram component allows display of boxes which can be linked to each other, so that relationships between different items can be made visible.
	TLMDServiceProvider The TLMDServiceProvider component is used to organize a service architecture in IDE-Tools applications.
	TLMDPropertyInspector The TLMDPropertyInspector control simulates functionality of the object inspector which is known from the Delphi / CBuilder IDE. With a couple of mouse clicks and a few lines of code you can integrate advanced design features into your applications. In addition the component provides a powerful interface which allows simple integration of own property editors or extended features.
	TLMDDesignPanel The DesignPanel control is required if you want to use TLMDDesigner in connection with a TWinControl descendant (instead of using the "form designer" mode). This control does not provide any design features itself, it handles only the control for which design feature should be enabled (e.g. adds scrollbars when design area extends dimensions of TLMDDesignPanel etc.).
	TLMDDesigner Use TLMDDesigner to make enduser design features similar to the form designer in Delphi IDE available. The control can be used in two ways: At first as stand alone control to set a form in "design mode" or used in connection with TLMDDesignPanel. A TLMDDesignPanel control acts as container for any TWinControl descendant for which runtime design features should be made available.
	TLMDObjectComboBox ComboBox like in Delphi object inspector, allowing display and selection of controls in the current designer.
	TLMDModule The TLMDModule component represents within DesignPack the designing-module where several module-related functions and events are centralized. Those utilities are used by other DesignPack controls or by the streaming system.
	TLMDDesignObjects TLMDDesignObjects is a component for representing object collections. Instances of this class can be connected to several LMD DesignPack components and play different roles. Like DB-aware Delphi visual controls automatically communicate with datasets, Design Pack controls communicate with TLMDDesignObjects collections.
	TLMDDesignManager Use TLMDDesignManager to connect designer control(s) with object combobox and property inspector components. Thus creation of a designer with object inspector like features is simplified, because almost no synchronization code is required.

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