Hi,

I am working on a program that has a kind of plugin architecture, and I am
having a problem that I hope someone here can help me with.

The main application on this project searches through a directory for
assemblies (its plugins). A given assembly may have a configuration settings
class (which is marked a custom attribute so it is recognizable as
configuration settings class).

The main application then needs to be able to create an instance of that
config class, then load up a form which has a PropertyGrid object on it, and
set the instance of the config class to the PropertyGrid's SelectedObject
property.

I can get most of this to work, however, the property grid always seems to
be disabled or read-only when the SelectedObject is set to a plugin's Config
Settings class. The properties of the Config Class show up, but I cannot
manipulate them

I use code similar to this:
   Private Sub ShowConfigForm(ByVal PlugIn As cmPlugin, ByVal
PluginConfigSettings As cmPluginConfigSettings)

       '' the full path to the assembly
       Dim pluginAssemblyPath As String =
My.Computer.FileSystem.CombinePath(My.Computer.FileSystem.CombinePath(PlugIn.location, PlugIn.name), PluginConfigSettings.assemblyName)

       '' load the assembly via reflection
       Dim configSettingsAssembly As Assembly =
Assembly.LoadFile(pluginAssemblyPath)
       Dim configSettingsObj As SettingsManager.ConfigSettingsBase

       ' find the config class
       For Each curType As Type In configSettingsAssembly.GetExportedTypes
           If curType.IsClass Then
               If curType.BaseType.Name =
GetType(SettingsManager.ConfigSettingsBase).Name Then

                   ' create an instance of the config class
                   configSettingsObj = Activator.CreateInstance(curType)
                   Exit For
               End If
           End If
       Next

       If Not IsNothing(configSettingsObj) Then
 
           '' pass the newly created instance of the config class to the
config form
           Dim config As New configForm(configSettingsObj)
           config.ShowDialog(Me)
       End If

   End Sub

As an experiment I changed:
  Dim configSettingsAssembly As Assembly =
Assembly.LoadFile(pluginAssemblyPath)
to:
  Dim configSettingsAssembly As Assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly

so that the main application's configuration class would be used instead of
the the plugin's. When I did this, the PropertyGrid loaded up just fine -
fully enabled.

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Doug