What can you do with a DLL??

Yes, yes, yes, and YES !

Firstly, DLLs in .NET are officially called "assemblies". In the IDE they're referred to as "Class Libaries".

In fact an exe is an assembly - just one which has the necessary code to enable it to be run by the operating system.

You can create one by right-clicking on the solution node in solution explorer whilst an exe-project is open and selecting "Add New Project". Select "Class Library" and an assembly will be created for you.

Next, your threading issues are a completely different matter. I would suggest you read up and learn threads in .NET before attempting this. There's too much to explain here but there's some good sources out there on the net as well as in MSDN.

Threading is complicated. Not in its coding, but in considering what is happening. You'll have to get into synchronisation - have a look at

http://www.dev-archive.com/Cpp/misc/misc/threadsprocesses/article.php/c9823

however it's in Win32, but should give you an idea of the issues involved.

Once you've learned how to create threads and synchronise between them (bear in mind the code in your UI is running on its own thread) you'll be in a better position to do what you need to do.

Darwen.

On a related topic...

Is it possible to find out what functions are exported by a .dll if all you have is the .dll?

There are 3 kinds of dlls : assemblies, native COM dlls and native static dll.s

You can look at the public classes of an assembly using IldAsm or Loetz Roeder's reflector.

COM dlls have a type library which you can examine using the OLE/COM object viewer supplied with VC++.

Static dlls exported functions can be examined using Depends.exe, which is also shipped with VC++.

Darwen.