Java components alingment on a panel?

Hi there鈥?br>
I鈥檓 trying to design a little panel with some components attached to it, the only layout manager I can use for this project is the flowLayout. Whenever I try to add a new component it adds it on the side, I need them to appear under the last added component. How can I do this? I tried re-sizing them, alignment none of those things seemed to work.

-------------------------PANEL--------...

-----------
\component1\
-----------
-----------
\component2\
-----------
-----------
\component3\
-----------

-------------------------PANEL--------...

the way FlowLayout works, it lays out your components from left to right until it reaches the end, then it starts over on the next line, etc. Like this:

--| Component 1 | ---- | Component 2| -----------------
--|Component3| -- |Component4| - -|Component5|--
--|Component6|--.....

so what you should do is either make your components be as wide or nearly as wide as the panel, or narrow down the panel, so that only one component per row fits.

when setting sizes in Swing, I use

setSize
setMinimumSize
setMaximumSize
setPreferredSize

all at the same time, try that. Some layouts disregard some of these method calls, but i'm yet to meet someone who'd know this part precisely.