SysTopic Class use now the Factory Pattern. Some previews of SysTopic are at Sourceforge. The new coded Topic Manager http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=204757&ssid=86991 The new coded Topic Editor http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=204757&ssid=86992 A software design pattern, the Abstract Factory Pattern provides a way to encapsulate a group of individual factories that have a common theme. In normal usage, the client software would create a concrete implementation of the abstract factory and then use the generic interfaces to create the concrete objects that are part of the theme. The client does not know (or care) about which concrete objects it gets from each of these internal factories since it uses only the generic interfaces of their products. This pattern separates the details of implementation of a set of objects from its general usage.