Ken,
Yes, VMP DOES have a VMP-defined property you set during design design for the number of buttons. Then as you surmised it makes the correct number visible, the rest invisible.

Yes, having items with the same name added in various levels of class/subclass can cause awkward results.

Barbara

>Well -- I just tried this and it didn't work the way I would have hoped. First of all, after increasing the buttons in my option group class, I could not open any forms where I already increased the size of the option group (the added members shared the same name). I had to rename the new object items 3-5 in my option group names to something other than the default (Option3, Option4, Option5).
>
>After I got the form to open, I saw the revised option group classes -- having 5 options. I thought I would be able to revise the buttoncount property to get rid of the undesired buttons. But that gives me an error and it won't let me do it. What does that method in Visual Maxframe do? Does it check a user defined property for "Live" buttons and hide (make invisible) the rest?