You do not need to override this method if your view sets its content in other ways.
By the time this method is called, UIKit has configured the drawing environment appropriately for your view and you can simply call whatever drawing methods and functions you need to render your content. Specifically, UIKit creates and configures a graphics context for drawing and adjusts the transform of that context so that its origin matches the origin of your view’s bounds rectangle. You can get a reference to the graphics context using the UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext function, but do not establish a strong reference to the graphics context because it can change between calls to the drawRect: method.
This method is called when a view is first displayed or when an event occurs that invalidates a visible part of the view. You should never call this method directly yourself. To invalidate part of your view, and thus cause that portion to be redrawn, call the setNeedsDisplay or setNeedsDisplayInRect: method instead.
以上摘自苹果官方文档。
原文：http://www.cnblogs.com/renlipeng/p/4559062.html