CardPanel

A CardPanel is not a Swing container on itself but a JPanel with a CardLayout layout manager, resulting in a "tabbed pane without tabs".
You switch the different cards programmatically like this:
// create a JPanel with CardLayout
JPanel cardPanel = new JPanel(new CardLayout());
// add some components to the panel, the second
// argument is a string which identifies the card
cardPanel.add(component1, "card1");
cardPanel.add(component2, "card2");
cardPanel.add(component3, "card3");
// display an arbitrary card, the second argument
// to show() is the identifier
((CardLayout)cardPanel.getLayout()).show(cardPanel, "card2");

You can , remove cards, select cards and edit the CardLayout's by selecting the aproppriate commands from a card panel's .

Define a controller for a CardPanel

With RADi you can define a controller for a card panel. Every JComboBox, JList or JTree whose number of items (rows) match the number of cards can be a controller. Select 'Define Controller' from the card panel's . In the you can select an appropriate controller and map controller items to cards.
(You may miss the option to define a button group as a controller. You have to do this programmatically, Coding examples - Controlling card panels explains how.)

Note: It is possible to control several card panels with one controller.

To select another card or to remove a card, select the according menu item from the card panel's .

You can also apply a FocusTraversalPolicy to containers contained in a CardPanel (see: Defining a FocusTraversalPolicy).

Note: You can from CardPanel to JTabbedPane and vice versa at every time without affecting the number or order of child components.