Welcome to the Ranch Jon.
This from the CardLayout API:
show
public void show(Container parent,
String name)
Flips to the component that was added to this layout with the specified name, using addLayoutComponent. If no such component exists, then nothing happens.
Regarding Neatbeans I think you will need to access the proper Container and call getLayout on it.
[ December 07, 2003: Message edited by: Jose Botella ]