Re: Where is my User Control

No, you can just use the control directly.  A UserControl is, at the end
of the day, just a class.  A project doesn't need a reference to itself
in order to use the classes it defines.  So it's no different for
controls.

There's a different question which sometimes arises: How do I get Visual
Studio .NET to let me add my control to my form?  That's an entirely
different question - this is a question of what VS.NET does for you by
default as far as drag and drop is concerned.  (So this is a Forms
Designer thing, rather than a VS.NET project system thing.  Project
references are a part of the latter, and have no direct influence on the
former.  Although the reverse is not true - the Forms Designer will
sometimes add project references for you.)

Sometimes VS.NET will add the controls you have written to the Toolbox,
sometimes it won't.  If your control is a custom control (rather than a
user control), then I don't think it ever appears in the Toolbox until
you add it manually.  For UserControls, they *normally* appear in the
"My User Controls" section of the Toolbox.  But sometimes they don't,
and I'm not entirely sure why.  (Your project needs to have been built
for them to appear here though.  So it might be worth closing the Form
Designer, rebuilding the project, and reopening the Form Designer to see
if the user control is now available in the My User Controls tab.  That
sometimes works.)

For the cases where your controls don't show up in the toolbox (either
because they're not user controls or because they just didn't appear)
you have two options.  You can just add code to use them directly.
Many's the time I've just dropped some other control type onto the form
and then done a search and replace to replace it with my control type.
(Use the fully-qualified name including the namespace when you do this.)
Once you've done that, when you go back to the design view, your control
will now be on the form.  Although it might have a size of (0,0), which
you'll need to fix...  (Your project will need to be built for this to
work by the way - VS.NET needs a built copy of the control to host it in
the designer.)

The other approach is to add your library to the Toolbox.  I usually
just drag the DLL in directly from a Windows Explorer window onto the
Toolbox because that tends to be faster than messing around with the
customization dialogs.  But you can just right click on a toolbox tab
and choose Add/Remove Items... - if you then browse for your control
library with the Browse... button on the .NET Framework Components tab,
you can add it to the toolbox.  Once it's on the toolbox, drag it onto
your form like you would any other control.


-- 
Ian Griffiths - DevelopMentor
http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Heintze
> 
> I need a dialog box with a user control. Since I am
> sick of C++ I create a new sub project as a Class
> Library.
> 
> In this class Library I add a windows form and a user
> control. When I had previously defined controls they
> were in a different sub-project.
> 
> Now, however, my user control is in the same
> sub-project as the dialog that is going to use it. How
> do I put my control in the dialog box? Does the sub
> project need to have a reference added to itself?