>Can a form be designed in the form designer which is based upon a programmatic class? If so how is it accomplished?

Theoretically, you could scratch your right ear with your left foot.

In this case, the answer is simply - no, AFAIK. Any class you create in a prg will remain there, and can't be edited in the class designer, nor can any object based on that class or any of its subclasses.

What you can do is have some manager code in a non-visual class, which will be instantiated from your form's .load or (preferrably) .init, or (even more preferrably) a loader object's .init (the loader can be a simple label, and it can return .f. from its init, so it won't be in the way). In that manager you can keep whatever code and cool methods you like, and call them throughout your form - but you won't get any help from Intellisense while you write the calls, because the manager object is not there until runtime.