title: Referencing user controls that are contained within the same VB.NET project
body: <p>I do apologize if this post is a duplicate, but I haven't found anything similar when I searched.</p>
  
  <p>I'm fairly new to VB.NET and I'm currently playing around with user controls, figuring out good programming practices. As far as I understand, to create and use a UserControl, I need to create a project with the UserControl in it, then build the project and use that DLL (add it to Toolbox or otherwise).</p>
  
  <p>My question is this: Is there a way a have a project (a Form with a bunch of things on it) that contains a UserControl written in a *.vb file inside <em>that same Project</em>? If you do that, the DLL (in my case) never gets produced, possibly because the UserControl is never used and building it is simply omitted. Is it perhaps a bad practice to do that altogether? It simply makes sense to me to keep a UserControl as a part of the Project that uniquely uses it. Is there a reason not to do that?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance! = )</p>
  
  <p><strong>SOLUTION:</strong>
  Visual Studio does <em>not</em> automatically include your own controls to the toolbox by default! In order to change that, go to Tools>Options>Windows Form Designer>General and set <code>AutoToolboxPopulate</code> to <code>True</code>. When you build your project next time, your new Control will appear in your Toolbox.</p>