Visual inheritance problems in Visual Studio

Question

So you've decided to make extensive use of visual inheritance in you application: UserControls, Composite Controls, Inherited forms etc. After coding up your various controls you start using the designer to place the controls on your forms. You're cruising along and for no reason your controls simply disappear. Sometimes all the controls disappear, sometimes only controls that are derived controls disappear. What I describe here is the scenario I have lived with for the last 2 days: where designing a windows form should take a few minutes ends up turning into hours of frustration. Anyone else encountered this?

Answer 1

I still encounter this as well. I'm not sure exactly what it is. I've seen it mostly when the parent controls have changed and are being rebuilt. I think it could be something to do w/ the properties in the Windows Generated Code, being different then the parent control has.

Answer 2

I'm using VisualStudio 2003 Enterprise Architect. I've read numerous threads on the MS newsgroups pertaining to this problem. I must assume that MS is aware of the problem, but have yet to see anything 'official' either acknowledging the issue or that any work is under way to correct it, like a patch.

Answer 3

Which version of VS are you using? I've encountered this occasionally, but it's been quite awhile since it's happened, so I'm thinking it was probably with 2002 and not with the latest 2003 version. ~~Bonnie

Answer 4

happened to me few times too, but mostly with inherited forms. Since then I abandoed the concept of using those, and if I do need to, I just do that by hand without using designer.