Just starting enterprise vb.net investigation. Do you have access to a global instantiation of the startup form?

Project will have a mdiForm with numerous mdichildren and some modal forms. The mdichildren know who their parent is via Parent property. If a mdichild form spawns a modal form, how can the modal form know who the startup form was?

Thanks for any help!

What are you trying to reference in the parent form?

J

The parent mdiform has a docking manager, toolbar manager, etc. Modal forms spawned by mdichildren may need access to data/objects in a docked pane (containing user control) on the startup form.

Currently the children are casting their parent form into the appropriate formtype and controlling show/hide of the pane. My manager thinks we should just be able to use a global instantiation of the startup form.

OK,

I think I understand what you are trying to do (but I may be wrong...)

However, I don't think that you need to make the whole form global, just the individual controls.

Here is a an example of a recent post with an example for accessing the properties of a textbox on a form from a different form. This can be applied to controls, dataset, etc.

http://p2p.wrox.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9924

Let me know if this doesn't help.

J

Yes, many thanks!!

Your example showed the answer [form1name] -- everyone has access to the the startup form by it's name!!

Your welcome :)

J