Dynamically add and remove particular Pane/PaneGroup?

[Dmitry]

I have RadDocking control with one split container and 4 RadPaneGroups each with single Pane in it. I need to implement possibility to hide and add third and fourth panes. I have done that via 
    SplitContainer.Items.Add(MyPaneGroup3);
and
    SplitContainer.Items.Remove(MyPaneGroup3);
This is working until user rearranges pane groups. After that both these calls do nothing even if PaneGroup is moved back to its initial location (at least visually). Is there a way to avoid this thing and be able to remove and add PaneGroup after user rearranged them?

Thanks in advance.

[Polya]

Hi Dmitry,

When we reorder RadPaneGroups in a RadSplitContainer the following actions are performed:
1) A new RadPaneGroup is created and the Items(RadPanes) of the original RadPaneGroup are placed inside the new one.
2) The new RadPaneGroup is placed in a ToolWindow.
3) The original RadPaneGroup is removed from the Items Collection of the RadSplitContainer.
4) When placing/docking the ToolWindow inside the SplitContainer, again, a new RadPaneGroup is created and the Items of the ToolWindow RadPaneGroup are placed inside the new RadPaneGroup.
5) The ToolWindow is closed.

Based on that, after a reorder of a RadPaneGroup the RadSplitContainer contains a copy of that group and not the original, so this line SplitContainer.Items.Remove(MyPaneGroup3); won't remove anything because MyPaneGroup3 is no longer in the Items of the SplitContainer.

I suggest, for example, modifying the remove logic to exclude RadPaneGroups based on information of their child RadPanes. This way we will not relate on a concrete instance of a RadPaneGroup(that will be lost when reordering it), but on its content ( which will be the same ). Here is a code snippet that removes the first RadPaneGroup from the SplitContainer that has a RadPane with header "Pane Group 3":

IEnumerable<RadPaneGroup> realPanes = this.SplitContainer.Items.OfType<RadPaneGroup>().Where(pg => pg.EnumeratePanes().Any(p => p.Header.ToString().Equals("Pane Group 3")));
if (realPanes.Any())
{
    this.SplitContainer.Items.Remove(realPanes.First());
}

Hopefully this helps and is applicable for your scenario.

Regards,
Polya
Telerik