William,
Welcome to the Map Suite discussion forum. I have a few questions that will help me answer your question. Do you want to color the different zones different colors or the same color? If you want them different colors do you have in the DBF file some column like ‘Zone’ which has values for each area like ‘1’, ‘2’, etc?
There are about 50 samples with code that come with the Desktop Edition. When you installed the software if you look in the Star\ThinkGeo\DekstopEdition folder you will find a link something like ‘VB.Net Sample Application or C# Sample Applications’ which is a project that has lots of samples. You can run them and they show the code as well. We designed the samples so that they have minimal static in them and each sample shows one piece of functionality clearly. You are also always welcome to ask us question here as well.
Come to think of it the Desktop is in Beta and we may not have VB samples. I will need to check this. If this is true I suggest you download the Services Edition. While you do not have to use it allot of the code in there for rendering maps is the same and I know there are VB.Net samples there. Like I said I will look into this and see what I can do.
David