Michelle,

Whenever I've done this sort of thing the composite control has a certain "as-designed" minimum size. When I drop it onto the place I want to use it I can see at design time how big a place it needs. Sometimes these kinds of controls are designed to adjust their size to fit the container size. For example I have a generic thermometer class, that's designed with a 100 pixel wide thermometer. If the class as used is dragged out to be 500 pixels wide the things adjust themselves to the bigger size.

Having this kind of developer message laying around in your code, allows at least a small chance, that it won't adequately be tested and might just pop up on the end user.

>This object needs to be used inside the container or nothing will work right, so I'm not worried about it not finding the property.
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>I don't want to make it resize because it might cover up other objects on the form. Which would mean I'd have to go and change the size, anyway. Besides, I'd end up in a catch-22 if I did that. The object in question bases its size on its container's size. So if I make the container base its size on the object, I think VFP would get thouroughly confused. :)
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>I don't understand why you guys are so against it putting up a little note saying the container is too small. It's not like the customer would ever see it. Just me and Matt and any other programmer he might hire. It should never happen, anyway, because the class starts out at its smallest size and the instructions specifically say not to make it any smaller. If someone forgets and makes it too small, they get the note and have to go make it bigger. It's really not a big deal.