Other than the scrollbars and a few treeviews throughout, the application is entirely VFP (mostly custom classes). The blueprint form over on the right allows the user to measure and count elements on the blueprint. Lines, shapes, and points are drawn on the plan by the user to get their measurements, over on the left-hand side there is a miniature view navigation window... allows you to drag the viewport of blueprint around (it's not using the form's viewport as one would ordinarily think of it in VFP as the blueprints are much too big - approaching 10000 x 10000 pixels in size). Below that is a magnified view of the mouse cursor when you are over the blueprint on the right. Below that are two tab docked forms, one for opening various blueprints by double-clicking on a thumbnail of it and the other for showing the individual estimate objects that user has placed on the form (height, length, width, weight, color, cost, price, etc). These docked forms can be put anywhere, however the user wants them just like we can customize the IDE in VFP when developing). The rulers on the form at the right are two VFP classes I created that show the actual measurements of the blueprint and slide with the blueprint as you move it around within the form. I'm hardly doing the application justice here, but that's a few comments on what the screenshot shows. I mean you can bring up as many blueprints at one time as you want and work on all of them simultaneously, rotate them, zoom them, set different scales on them, estimate a couple thousand different items on them... run out reports, excel exports, search the net for more blueprints (construction projects), send requests for bids to other contractors, etc. The app can be as intense or as simplistic as the user working it.

I feel it's a good example of what is possible with VFP these days. So often people acquait VFP with ugly, switchboard, modal everything, applications that could easily be flowcharted with two rectangles, a triangle and a square. I can understand how certain people arrived at this perception of VFP, but nothing could be further from the truth. Couple the new reporting and UI features VFP 9 has (this includes the new abilities given to VFP lines, shapes, and image controls which this takeoff application makes heavy use of) with subclassing, data driven approaches and VFP applications can and should rival anything anywhere. It doesn't get any sexier than that (excepting the Victoria Secrets post).