Well, my favorite way it to make a pointer to the parent dialog box. Like so
CTheParentDlgBox * pPointer = (CTheParentDlgBox*)GetParent()
The command line initializing a pointer can be placed anywhere in your child box programming, as long as your child box is a direct dialog box of CTheParentDlgBox. This allows the child box access to public members (variables) of the parent dialog. To access these parent members just use the pointer like such:
pPointer->theVariable
Now your accessing variables from the parent dialog box. Be careful, the pPointer will also reassign values to the parents variable if you change them in child box. If you don't wish to change it in the parent box, but like to change the value in the child box. Make a new variable in the child box and assign the parents variable value to that of the childs variable, like so:
int childVariable = pPointer->theVariable.
Hope this helps you out some
Nyjil