In my application I have various styles and templates that are used in several classes. I've defined these in my so they are visible from all child objects.
However during design-time the WPF designer can't see these resources, complains they were 'not found' and demands the errors must be fixed before reloading the designer.
Is there something I can do to get it to look up the object hierarchy, or to point it specifically at the file that defines them?
You'll have to use Expression Blend to get your styles and templates to behave as you would expect them to behave. Unfortunately, Microsoft appears to have forsaken Visual Studio's WPF designer for all except the simplest of cases. They seem to have gotten serious about the separation of design and devleopment, at least to a degree.