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Is this a way to show a modeless dialog from a dockable pane using WPF?

I'm building a Revit plugin. It consists of a dockable pane that (among other elements) has a button. I want to open a new, separate window when a user clicks this button.
At the moment, i create a new Window, but i don't know if that's the right way to go, because now i see two Revit icons on a task bar. I do not have experience as Revit user, i'm new to Revit development, so i'm not sure if this should be the case (two icons) and as silly as it sounds, i do not have admin rights to install random addins and get a feeling of expected user experience.
I create a Window using the following code:
ParametersMissingValueWindow parametersMissingValueWindow = new ParametersMissingValueWindow();
parametersMissingValueWindow.Show();
Based on the understanding of a dockable pane that i have, i think i do not want to create another dockable pane, but just a simple modeless dialog. I wasn't able to find any examples using WPF. Hence, any information whether this is the way to go or help on how to achieve this is highly appreciated.

The Show method takes an optional parent window argument. Specify the Revit main window as the parent window, and your modeless dialogue will be recognised as belonging to the running Revit process. It is accessible from the MainWindowHandle property.

var MyWindow = new MyWindow();
HwndSource hwndSource = HwndSource.FromHwnd(UIApplication.MainWindowHandle);
Window wnd = hwndSource.RootVisual as Window;
if (wnd != null)
{
MyWindow.Owner = wnd;
//MyWindow.ShowInTaskbar = false;
MyWindow.Show();
}
It's not necessary to assign a value to ShowInTaskbar property, but it actually achieves what i wanted to do from the beginning (have only one program open in taskbar), so i left it as part of the solution, but commentted out.
Big thanks to Jeremy Tammik for pointing out the parent property.

You can use WPF to setup a window to use in revit.
MyWPF menu = new menu();
System.Windows.Window wind = new System.Windows.Window();
wind.ShowDialog(); //--> the window shows up and make stuff for revit
if you need the menu to be a dockable one check this source.
Perhaps is not up to date and you will need to adapt the code to the new api.

Showing a modeless form's 'title bar' inside the parent form when it's minimized

I'm trying to implement some complement views inside my application and I would like to have a better layout control over them. I don't know how to explain in words what my desired functionality is, so I made it through with some photoshop help, hoping you could give me a hand to implement it.
My application now looks like this:
(i need reputation to post images so.. sorry for the links)
http://i59.tinypic.com/2ikv8m1.jpg
When I minimize the modeless form which is focused in the previous image, I would like to be able to see it (and handle it to maximize or close) inside my main form as I show in the image below (made it in photoshop)
http://i58.tinypic.com/1e28go.jpg
Hope someone can lead my into a solution and thanks for the support.
EDIT: I need to be able to move that form outside my main form, even to a different monitor.

If you don't want to use the MDI approach, then set TopLevel of the modeless Form to false and add it to the main Forms Controls collection before showing it:
Form frm = new Form();
frm.TopLevel = false;
this.Controls.Add(frm);
frm.Show();
*Obviously changing Form to the correct type of your modeless form.

If i understand what you are trying to do, you want to minimize a certain form but still see it within your app (im assuming like Excel or Word)
You can do something similar to what Idle_Mind said, but enclose both in a Form instead of the parent.
Form fParent = new Form();
fParent.Dock = DockMode.Fill;//i think this is the syntax. Use this if you want the form to fill to the screen
Form fChild = new Form();
fChild.TopLevel = false;
fParent.Controls.Add(fChild);
fChild.Show();
Here, it should minimize to the lower left part of the parent form. You can then size the parent to whatever you want it to be.

specify parent MDI form

I am trying to specify the parent MDI form when showing a form in c#
All the examples suggest just using
FormVariable.Parent = this;
this works ok assuming you want the form to be opened from the parent window all the time.
I want to be able to open a form and set the Parent form to my MDI Parent form by specifying the name.
in VB.net I have used
Me.MdiParent = TheNameOfMyParentForm
When I try anything similar in c#
this.MdiParent = CruxMDI();
I get
'Crux.CruxMDI' is a 'type' but is used like a 'variable'

Form.MdiParent has to reference a concrete instance. So, maybe it would be a good idea to implement a Singleton pattern (you probably don't want to allow multiple parent windows either way, do you?) in your Parent container, so that you can reference it from wherever you need to. Then you'll just type:
this.MdiParent = CruxMDI.Instance;
If you want to add such behavior automatically and it needs to happen in many Forms in your application, you may consider an option when you'd create a custom base class inheriting from Form. That way you specify this once and then you just need to be sure to inherit your new Forms from this baseclass instead of a default Form.
Either way, you need to have some kind of mechanism to reference the instance of your MDI container.

Accessing forms from different locations in WPF

Still getting used to WPF from a win forms programmer. I have multiple forms in an application that can be accessed from multiple locations, so I need to keep the forms "global" as I'm not sure of a better terminology.
For instance "Details" can be opened from a "Main Menu" but can also be opened from a grid in "Search", I'd like the details returned from the search to be displayed in the "Details" page even if it was pre-opened from the main menu.
I've come across Application.Current.Properties and have started storing a few forms in it but it just feels plain wrong to set:
Vehicle vehicleForm = new Vehicle();
Application.Current.Properties["frmVehicle"] = vehicleForm;
And then to access it:
if (Application.Current.Properties["frmVehicle"] == null)
Application.Current.Properties["frmVehicle"] = new frmVehicle();
Vehicle vehicleFrm = (Vehicle)Application.Current.Properties["frmVehicle"];
vehicleFrm.Show();
vehicleFrm.Activate();
I have just discovered Application.Current.Windows as well which has thrown me a little.
What is the most efficient/industry standard way of dealing with form like this?

I would just check whether Application.Current.Windows contains an instance of your window. If so then you give it focus, if not then you create an instance.

I'm not sure if I understand how are you opening the window correctly. But if all you want to do is to have one instance of the window through the whole run time of the application, you can use the Singleton pattern. Basically, the window class has a static property that holds the only instance.
If you don't need to keep any state in the window, you can just create new instance of it every time you want to show it.

How can I get the reference to currently active modal form?

I am writing a small class for driving integration testing of a win form application. The test driver class has access to the main Form and looks up the control that needs to be used by name, and uses it to drive the test. To find the control I am traversing the Control.Controls tree. However, I get stuck when I want to get to controls in a dialog window (a custom form shown as a dialog). How can I get hold of it?

You can get a reference to the currently active form by using the static Form.ActiveForm property.
Edit: If no Form has the focus, Form.ActiveForm will return null.
One way to get around this is to use the Application.OpenForms collection and retrieve the last item, witch will be the active Form when it is displayed using ShowDialog:
// using Linq:
var lastOpenedForm = Application.OpenForms.Cast<Form>().Last()
// or (without Linq):
var lastOpenedForm = Application.OpenForms[Application.OpenForms.Count - 1]

I'm not sure if you can access controls on a pre-built dialog box; they seem all packaged together. You may have more luck building a dialog box of your own that does what you want it to do. Then you can access the .Controls inside of it.

Correct me if i'm wrong, though, it sounds as if you are possibly attempting to access the controls on the dialog form when it's not quite possible to.
What I mean is, ShowDialog will "hold up" the thread that the form was created on and will not return control to the application (or, your test class) until ShowDialog has finished processing, in which case your user code would continue on its path.
Try accessing or manipulating the controls from a separate thread (in this case, refactor the test driver class to spawn a separate thread for each new form that must be displayed and tested).