>>Modal forms should be limited to situations where the application needs--really needs--the user to do something before continuing with anything else. As with a Quick Add that gets the minimum information for a customer while ringing up a purchase. Since it's a bummer that certain things don't function while a modal form is open (say, the edit menu) and since it's by it's nature obstructive, they really shouldn't be used often.
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>Are modal forms the only way to handle Quick Adds?

Generally speaking, in my experience, yes. But that may not work for your situation.

>I've got one I'm calling non-modally, and am having a hard time making the parent form display data that was just entered on the Quick Add. I think I'd like to keep the Add form non-modal, but I need to resolve the display bug.

The problem with using a modeless form to gather the data is that the calling form doesn't obviously know when the user is finished in the child form. How are you passing the message from the child to the parent that "Okay! I'm all done. Update yourself now."? If you're passing a reference to the parent into the child's Init(), the child could, on release, tell the parent to refresh itself.