I realize this is probably not an issue for those who are not crazy like we are here and have just a few tables/business objects in their application, but, it's really a pain that the mapping results screen is setup as on top and comes up on top of everything else on the system.  It's not an issue if I just build one partial, but when I rebuild all (happens more than I would like due to structure changes etc) it can of course take a while, and while this is running my primary monitor is close to useless.  I know I could put VS over on the secondary and the mapper would follow, but I prefer to have VS on the primary and other stuff on my secondary monitor.

We show the results screen as a dialog because we are automating into VS to do all of the code generation.  We open documents, change the contents, use VS to "smart format" them, save them, close them, etc.  So, while the process is going on, it was a design decision to prevent you from being able to continue working in VS so that you wouldn't accidentally change something you didn't want to as the documents are opened, focused, and closed automatically.

I have no problem with preventing doing other stuff in VS, but with the current settings I can't do anything in ANY environment without moving it to the other screen to do it.  I understand it being on top of VS, but it would be nice if other applications could be brought to the front.  This is particularly a problem on my laptop where I only have the one screen, and being slower, it takes longer to do a build so I'm locked out of doing anything while building the data objects (like on my laptop it would be nice to surf the web or read my email while building the data objects.)  At this point in the process this is fairly common to need to do as we tweak things and make data structure changes.

Ah, we don't actually lock the entire computer, just Visual Studio... when I do a long build, I generally open the web and browse for other stuff, too.  The problem may be that the build process is just taking up 100% of your processor while it's building, so the computer is just locking up.

No, the computer has plenty of horsepower left, but anything on the same monitor as the business object mapper appears UNDER the business object mapper's screen and as such is very difficult if not impossible to work with.  This is a minor annoyance only on my desktop, but on my laptop (where I often do these things at night) with only the single screen I'm not able to do anything because I can't see the other programs screen because of the thing sticking on top of EVERY screen on the system, even the task manager comes up underneath.  I don't know if this is specific to Vista (which is my OS) but it's a little annoying.  I can work around it (of course I can't play Tiger Woods 2007 while building the business objects, but that would b silly to try anyways, but it would be nice to be able to surf the web while they are building).

Cyrus,

Yeah, the BO Mapper is a topmost window...we did this because without the TopMost flag, the window had a tendency to disappear (amongst other issues early on).  We do, however, allow this window to be positioned and it will retain its previous position.  But for now, while working on a single monitor, I understand the problem and we can try to make an adjustment later, but for now there is not much we can do without making a change to the BO Mapper.  I will look into this for future enhancements though.  Thanks!

I'll try dragging the window down to the bottom of the screen next time and see if that helps.  That will at least let me do other stuff while doing long builds (like I need to do tonight).

Cyrus,

In most cases, you generally do not want to rebuild the partial classes for every BO.  Generally you just need to rebuild the partial for the class or two that you have changed.  In this case, right-click the BO that you want to build, then click "Build Partial."  This way only the BO that needs to be built will be built versus waiting for every BO every time.