C# controls

Hi,

I'm relatively new to C# having mainly mucked around in VB.Net but am striking a very unusual problem which is confusing the living daylights out of me.

I decided as both a learning exercise and something that I will actually use to write a simple Colour ( Color ) for the Americans Picker control.

I first of all wrote the program code in C# to generate what I wanted onto a blank form and that worked fine.

Now here's where it gets a bit sticky - I decided in place of drawing the control using the designer to use the code I had already generated inside the control and simply plop it on a form, this has had the effect that while the control in the design view itself is nothing but a grey box the control that you drop onto the form however is a visual representation of what I coded previously on the form. I did this because of placement issues with the designer padding the distance between controls when I added them by hand - while a nice feature very frustrating if you are trying to do something fiddly

Here's the rub though when putting the control on the form it looks perfect - but when you run the form all the contents of the control appears to be about 25% larger than you would expect it to be looking at the control on the form before running the code. If you try and shrink the size of the control either vertically or horizontally it clips the visual representation of the control when the form is running so that part of the control disappears.

I'm stuck as to why I always thought it was a case of WYSISWYG - so why is this scaling issue happening:

Basicly I want my plop on the form user control and the final output when executing it to be the same size - that of the pre run time.

The form is just a standard windows form with this control compiled and added to it in the control_load event:

Thank you to anyone who can save what is left of my hair.

    public void initCP()
        {
            string[] myRGB = {  "FFFFFF","FFC0C0","FFE0C0","FFFFC0","C0FFC0","C0FFFF","C0C0FF","FFC0FF","E0E0E0","FF8080","FFC080","FFFF80","80FF80","80FFFF","8080FF","FF80FF","C0C0C0","FF0000","FF8000","FFFF00","00FF00","00FFFF","0000FF","FF00FF","808080","C00000","C04000","C0C000","00C000","00C0C0","0000C0","C000C0","404040","800000","804000","808000","008000","008080","000080","800080","000000","400000","804040","404000","004000","004040","000040","400040" };

            int ColourIndex = 0;
            Panel MasterPanel = new Panel(); 
            MasterPanel.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(2, 2);
            MasterPanel.Name = "MasterPanel";
            MasterPanel.Margin = new Padding(0);
            MasterPanel.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(148, 112);
            MasterPanel.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.FixedSingle;
            MasterPanel.BackColor = SystemColors.ControlLight;
            MasterPanel.ForeColor = Color.DarkCyan;

            for (int PanRow = 0; PanRow <= 5; PanRow++)
            {    
                for (int PanCol = 0; PanCol <= 7; PanCol++)
                {
                    Panel Pan = new Panel();
                    Pan.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(2 + PanCol * 18, 2 + PanRow * 18);
                    Pan.Name = "Panel" + PanCol.ToString() + PanRow.ToString();
                    Pan.Margin=new Padding(0);
                    Pan.ForeColor = Color.Black;        
                    Pan.BackColor = Color.FromArgb( MyRed(myRGB[ColourIndex]),
                                                    MyGreen(myRGB[ColourIndex]),
                                                    MyBlue(myRGB[ColourIndex]) ); 
                    Pan.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.FixedSingle;    
                    Pan.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(16, 16);
                    MasterPanel.Controls.Add(Pan);
                    ColourIndex++;
                }
            }
            this.Controls.Add(MasterPanel);
        }
        public int MyRed(string r)
        {
            return Convert.ToInt32(r.Substring(0, 2),16);
        }
        public int MyGreen(string g)
        {
            return Convert.ToInt32(g.Substring(2, 2),16);
        }
        public int MyBlue(string b)
        {
            return Convert.ToInt32(b.Substring(4, 2),16);
        }

All the worlds a stage and the people only actors.. Here's the rub the people suck at acting and this things a re run.