>By the way, I've noticed that the Anchor property should be set *after* setting the initial size of the controls -- otherwise the controls "remember" the original size when the Anchor property was set and set the size accordingly.

I think that's the key to my troubles. I was able to solve the problem programmatically. I put 4 instances of my class in the container and didn't change their height in design time. Then in outer container Init I wrote

with this
	.anchor = 0
	.height = .height + 1
	.anchor = 15
	store 0 to .cntSort.anchor, .cntOutput.anchor, .cntFilter.anchor, .cntFilter1.anchor
	store 180 to .cntSort.height, .cntOutput.height, .cntFilter.height, .cntFilter1.height
	store 240 to .cntSort.anchor, .cntOutput.anchor, .cntFilter.anchor, .cntFilter1.anchor
endwith

and it worked.

It took me about an hour (or even more) to understand the basics, but now I set already several controls anchor property and have fun with it.

In fact, I was thinking about starting a new thread last night, but got distracted...

I'll do it later today.