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I'm working with VST / VDT since many years. But now I'm kind of stuck on a project and wonder how you could draw Child Nodes side by side, right next to each other, instead of "row by row"?

Pictures say more than words:

1) Currently, which is the default behaviour

2) Desired (Photoshop'd), without using N columns

3) Forced, empty branch remains

I didn't look at the VTV code yet, but it appears that the default behaviour is "hardcoded".

That means even if I force the Child Node(s) at the desired position by calculating the Canvas position(s) manually, an empty branch remains. The more children, the more empty branches.

One solution I came up with includes adding N Columns. But I really don't like that because the children must flow and wrap when I resize the Window.

So for me it almost looks like VST / VDT is inappropriate for that task. Or what do you think? Can you recommend a solution / component to achieve the desired output? Did you already run into a similar problem? How did you solve it?

Thank you very much in advance for your attendance and time!

Mario Werner
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    It's a tree view which has a view of vertically placed nodes (as can be seen by the vertical tree lines). For your desired layout you can add columns and render what you need in *cells*. Just keep in mind that a node is actually a row, so you'll need to design your node data structure to *hold* data for both columns. – TLama Feb 25 '15 at 08:15
  • Thanks. Yes, I was afraid I can't ravish the TreeView like that. :( And I don't like the idea of columns either, because the design must be fluid. One component which looks suitable is https://www.devexpress.com/Products/VCL/ExOrgChart/ ... But spending $1500 to use 1 of 190+ components is wasted money. – Mario Werner Feb 25 '15 at 16:10
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    Difficult to say what you're going to do, but if you're going to just render a chart like that, then it might be quite easy to make your own control for that. Editing would be more difficult though. You can give a try to free [`TSimpleGraph`](http://www.delphiarea.com/products/delphi-components/simplegraph/) (never tried it by myself). In any case, it's definitely not a task for virtual tree. – TLama Feb 25 '15 at 16:24
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    Yes, I thought about an own component, but wanted to avoid it since project time is already running. :D `TSimpleGraph` looks interessting too. Maybe it can be extended. In the end each node will contain quite a complex set of controls, like a picture, a realtime-updated bar-graphics, some buttons, labels, etc. `VirtualTreeView` was always very customizable, even for very unorthodox things. But I guess here I hit the limits of its possibilites. – Mario Werner Feb 25 '15 at 16:40

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