Inheriting directly from QDockWidget makes it so I can't place widgets in designer

Shadowblitz16

does anybody know why I can't place widgets on my QDockWidget when its the topmost parent?

I have it the top most parent because I want it to be a custom widget and not a custom window.
http://imgur.com/a/gl9lp

Chris Kawa

QDockWidget has its own layout and you put a widget in it via the method setWidget. So in your case make the top most widget inherit a QWidget instead of QDockWidget and add it to the dock from code.

Shadowblitz16

the top most widget is the TileMapWidget that inherits from DockWidget though.
and I need it to be a DockWidget so that when I add it I can dock it.

QDockWidget *MainWindow::loadDockWindow(Qt::DockWidgetArea dockArea, QDockWidget *widget)
{
    if (widget == NULL) addDockWidget(dockArea, widget);

    if (!widget->isVisible())  widget->show();
    else widget->hide();

    return widget;
}

Chris Kawa

Well, for whatever reason your dockwidget .ui file is missing the contents widget. Either recreate it via wizard or just manually fix the file in text editor:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ui version="4.0">
   <class>TileMapWidget</class>
   <widget class="QDockWidget" name="TileMapWidget">
      <widget class="QWidget" name="dockWidgetContents"/>
   </widget>
</ui>

Shadowblitz16

thankyou Chris Kawa.