QMainWindow inside another widget

[DanFessler]

Hello, I'm very new to Qt. I'm trying to replicate the functionality of a mockup of mine for a tool i'm developing. This would call for dockwidgets and toolbars to be inside a tabwidget. From what i've read, the only widget that can hold dockables and toolbars is the main-window and some have suggested to somehow make the mainwindow a child of another widget (in my case, a tabwidget). But the answers were never well defined for someone new to qt. Could someone please give a detailed solution to this?

I currently have a .UI form designed with a tabwidget. Would it be possible to design another .UI document that contained another mainwindow to be inserted into these tabs from my first .ui file?

here is my mockup for reference:
http://danfessler.com/dump/mock_modanim.png

[ChrisW67]

You can certainly place a QMainWindow inside another widget; I use them inside MDI child windows for example.

You can design the main window separately and install it as a child of another widget in code. I expect you could also embed it in its parent by placing a QWidget in the parent and using the Promote feature to change its class.

[DanFessler]

and install it as a child of another widget in code

thanks for the reply. I would greatly appreciate someone walking me through this part. Assume you have just created a new Qt GUI project within qt creator and added a tabwidget to the existing mainwindow.ui

Thanks
-Dan

[ChrisW67]

Exactly how you do the plumbing depends on exactly how you want things arranged. However, it's something along these lines:

• Open your project in Qt Creator
• "Add New...", "Designer Form Class", type is "Main Window", and provide some names to add another QMainWindow derivative to your project. I'll use a class called ThingyTabInnerWindow as an example.
• Design the new inner form.
• Go to the source for the UI class that contains your tab widget (e.g. MainWindow)
• In the constructor (or somewhere else that makes sense) try something like the code below. It's exactly the same as adding any other widget to a tab widget.

#include "thingytabinnerwindow.h"
 
MainWindow::MainWindow(...) {
  setupUi(this);  // the main window's Designer UI
  ...
  // Patch in your inner window using the Designer created class
  ThingyTabInnerWindow *tTIW = new ThingyTabInnerWindow(this);
  ui->tabWidget->addTab(tTIW, tr("Thingy Tab Heading"));
  // connect any inner window signals to slots as needed
  ...
}

#include "thingytabinnerwindow.h"

MainWindow::MainWindow(...) {
  setupUi(this);  // the main window's Designer UI
  ...
  // Patch in your inner window using the Designer created class
  ThingyTabInnerWindow *tTIW = new ThingyTabInnerWindow(this);
  ui->tabWidget->addTab(tTIW, tr("Thingy Tab Heading"));
  // connect any inner window signals to slots as needed
  ...
}

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[DanFessler]

This was extremely useful. Thank you so much.