I have a few panels that take up a lot of space on my form, and sometimes when I drop a new control onto the form, Visual Studios will put that control inside that panel, which is something I do not want. Is there any way to be sure that a control is not inside of a panel?
Use the Document Outline view to see a tree of the hierarchy.
Click "View" → "Other Windows" → "Document Outline".
The default shortcut is Ctrl + W, U.
In addition: Clicking a control in the designer and then clicking multiple times the Esc key will travel up in hierarchy, always selecting the parent, until the root form/control is being selected.
This could be a way to see visually which control a certain control is contained inside.