Sorry, what I mean is that I am tring to create a  program.  That has a
main window and sub windows inside it.  One of which can be drawn on.
Sort of like having multiple documents open is sub windows in microsoft
word.

Thanks.  

Ben.

Thanks for your replies.

After looking around on the net, I found this.

/** Panel on which to draw two shapes. **/
class ShapesPanel extends JPanel
{
 public void paintComponent (Graphics g) {
   // First paint background
   super.paintComponent (g);

   // The context that is passed is actually
   // the Graphics2D sub-class of Graphics. So
   // we can cast it to Graphics2D and take advantage
   // of the additional tools that it has.
   Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)g;

   // Options on the rendering, i.e. the actual pixel settings
   // of the drawing, can be chosen via RenderingHints
   g2.setRenderingHint (RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
                        RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);

   // Create the two shapes, a circle and a square.
   Shape shape1 = new Ellipse2D.Double (40.0, 60.0, 70.0, 70.);
   Shape shape2 = new Rectangle2D.Double (65.0, 35.0, 70.0, 70.0);

   // Now draw the shapes.
   g2.draw (shape1);
   g2.draw (shape2);
 } // paintComponent

} // class ShapesPanel

After the frame and panel have been created and made visible.  Is it
possible to make the panel created using the above function redraw?
For example if the shapes specified in changed every second so.  Could
I have another function that kept telling  the panel to redraw.  Is
this possible? If so how?

Thanks.

Ben.

Hi,

I have now created a class that extends JPanel and I have my own code
in the paintcomponent that paints to a panel (similar layout of code to
above).  The class that initialises the JFrame and JPanel runs
repaint() every second and updates the panel just fine.
        However when I try to use a layout manager on the frame.
Everything appears but the panel doesn't get drawn. After playing
around I used the following code to add the panel and a button (cp is
the content pane of the frame).

cp.add(button1, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
cp.add(panel1, BorderLayout.NORTH);

When it runs I noticed that you can just see the top of one of the
circles that gets drawn on the frame. It is at the top of the panel.
This makes me think something is getting painted over the top of my
frame.

Does anyone have any suggestion of what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks.

Ben.