WinForms: Making a set of controls scale vertically.

Question

I have a Windows Form that displays several DataGridViews in the following layout:
(No access to image hosting at work, so please pardon the ASCII art...)

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐  
│┌───────────┐┌──────────────────────────┐│  
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘└──────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Unfortunately, when the user resizes the form to be taller, the form ends up looking like this:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐  
│┌───────────┐┌──────────────────────────┐│  
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|             |                          ||
|             |                          ||
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|             |                          ||
|             |                          ||
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘└──────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Instead of this:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐  
│┌───────────┐┌──────────────────────────┐│  
││           ││                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘│                          ││
|┌───────────┐│                          ││
││           ││                          ││
││           ││                          ││
│└───────────┘└──────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

To reproduce this, anchor the Top-Left DataGridView to Top-Left, the Center-Left DataGridView to Left, and the Bottom-Left DataGridView to Bottom-Left, and the big DataGridView to all 4.

What can I do to get the behavior I want?

Answer 1

Put a TableLayoutPanel in the left hand column with 3 rows and 1 column, dock each of the smaller controls in a row with docking stlye "fill", then anchor the TableLayoutPanel left, top, and bottom.

Answer 2

Try using the some SplitContainer controls in combination with some Panel or GroupBox containers. Then your user will have the ability to size as needed also.