Thanks Bonnie,

And I did mean Panel. I'm calling it a 'Pane', but it's a panel control.


>In our WinForm apps we have similar functionality. The Form uses Panels (you mentioned "Panes", so I'm wondering if you're using WPF? That's the only control I see called a Pane.) Anyway, we basically have two Panels, one on the left side, populated with SideBar Items (we use DevExpress for this) and a central Panel for "hosting" a UserControl When an Item is clicked in the left Panel, we instantiate, by Reflection, the appropriate UserControl based on what the user click. The existing UserControl that was in the Panel is removed and the newly instantiated UserControl is put in the Panel. It can load it's own data.
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>You've further complicated it by adding a lower Panel, but it almost seems to me that the lower Panel should actually be part of the UserControl that's being loaded in the main Panel, and it would do a similar thing that the left SideBar does (instantiate a UserControl by reflection and put it into the lower Panel).
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>In summary, what I'm thinking, is that you have three controls, a Form with a two Panels, a UserControl with two Panels, and a UserControl with no Panels. A click on something in the left-side Panel of the Form instantiates the proper UserControl with two Panels (and it's placed in the Form's right-side Panel). Since this new UserControl has an upper and lower Panel, when the user chooses something from the upper Panel, it instantiates the proper UserControl and places it in the lower Panel.
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>~~Bonnie
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>>I am designing an app that looks something like this: http://www.componentfactory.com/windows-forms-tabcontrol.php
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>>The area under "Family" will contain various types of lists of data, and possibly other controls. To facilitate this I am creating Panes with the grids or controls on them that I want to display, which is determined by what the user clicks on the left side. When the user clicks an item in the left side area, I will remove the current pane and add the selected pane, then load it with any data required.
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>>When the user takes action in the top pane, I want to load the lower pane, so again, remove the lower pane, add the selected pane.
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>>The question is this... How do I manage all of this, meaning, the panes have to be able to commicate with the form, which I could do via an event, but how do I code this if the controls are being added/removed at runtime?