# Can I draw on top of a plugin's window?

**URL:** <https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913>\
**Category:** Audio Plugins\
**Created:** [December 24, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913 "2011-12-24T07:21:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kurt6string](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e5b9ba/32.png) [@kurt6string](https://forum.juce.com/u/kurt6string)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913/1 "2011-12-24T07:21:47Z")

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I’m thinking about a real-time tutorial that teaches a beginner how to use a soft synth and am wondering if it’s possible to draw ‘circles-n-arrows’ that point to the controls on any given vst plugin, as the tutorial manipulates them to demonstrate their use. Imagine a pane of glass on top of a plugin window that I can write on. Doable? yeah or nay?

Thanks,  
Kurt

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**Author:** ![jules](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@jules](https://forum.juce.com/u/jules)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 1:03pm UTC](https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913/2 "2011-12-24T13:03:51Z")

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Well, you can’t just draw over it with a paint() method, but you could float a semi-transparent window in front of it and draw into that?

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**Author:** ![kurt6string](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e5b9ba/32.png) [@kurt6string](https://forum.juce.com/u/kurt6string)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913/3 "2011-12-24T18:35:31Z")

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Excellent…That will work. Thanks, and enjoy the holiday weekend Jules.

One more question if you don’t mind. In the audio plugin host demo the PluginWindow class is the container for the plugins editor. Can I create the floating transparent pane within the PluginWindow as well? That way the plugin editor and glass pane to draw on would be locked together, and draggable by the title of the PluginWindow. They’d not become separated that way? See what I mean?

Thanks,  
Kurt

p.s. I used the Image and Resources stuff for the first time yesterday and loved it. I was beginning to think it wasn’t possible for the development system AND the program being written to reliably display the image no matter where the code was located. Having the code run, AND display it’s images, AND not having to debug ‘resource not found’ issues made doing the graphics stuff rather fun. Thank you…

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**Author:** ![jules](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@jules](https://forum.juce.com/u/jules)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913/4 "2011-12-26T20:40:28Z")

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There’s no easy way to lock the windows together - it can be done in OSX if you make some native calls and set their window groups, but not sure how it’d be possible in windows. Just using a ComponentMovementWatcher would probably work though.

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**Author:** ![kurt6string](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e5b9ba/32.png) [@kurt6string](https://forum.juce.com/u/kurt6string)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2011, 5:32am UTC](https://forum.juce.com/t/can-i-draw-on-top-of-a-plugins-window/7913/5 "2011-12-27T05:32:40Z")

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Thanks for the advice Jules, that’s going to save me a lot of time, I appreciate it.