Story Graph Basics
The foundational walkthrough of the StoryCADLib API. This sample takes you through the complete lifecycle of a story outline: creating it, populating it with elements, linking those elements together, saving to disk, and reloading to verify the round-trip.
[!TIP] If you haven’t already, run through the Quick Start first. It’s a copy-paste Hello World that gets you up and running in five minutes. Once that works, come back here. Every other sample builds on the patterns introduced in this one.
What It Demonstrates
The sample creates an outline called “The Clockwork Conspiracy” and populates it with six story elements: one Problem, two Characters, one Setting, and two Scenes. It then links them together: assigning a Protagonist and Antagonist to the Problem, attaching a Setting and Cast to each Scene, and creating a mirrored relationship between the two characters.
After building the outline, it queries the story graph three ways: listing all elements, filtering by type, and retrieving a single element by GUID. Finally, it writes the outline to a .stbx file, reopens it, and confirms the element count matches.
This covers the core create-link-query-persist workflow that every StoryCADLib consumer needs.
API Methods Used
| Method | Purpose |
|---|---|
CreateEmptyOutline |
Create a new story from template |
AddElement |
Add Problem, Character, Setting, Scene |
UpdateElementProperties |
Set Protagonist, Antagonist, Setting GUIDs |
AddCastMember |
Link characters to scenes |
AddRelationship |
Create character-to-character relationship |
GetAllElements |
List every element in the model |
GetElementsByType |
Filter elements by StoryItemType |
GetElement |
Retrieve a single element’s full data |
WriteOutline |
Save model to .stbx file |
OpenOutline |
Load model from .stbx file |
How to Run
cd samples/StoryGraphBasics
dotnet build -f net10.0-desktop
dotnet run -f net10.0-desktop