I find sometimes that the DragManager is overkill. I had problems with it as well, it's just too complicated.
For a simple drag and drop of panels, such as here http://code.google.com/p/air-sql-designer/source/browse/trunk/Flex/src/airsqldesigner/TablePanel.mxml I have simply (the good old flash way) btnDrag.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, startDragging); btnDrag.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, stopDragging); public function startDragging(e:MouseEvent) :void { this.startDrag(); } public function stopDragging(e:MouseEvent = null) :void { this.stopDrag(); } This has limitations. Hope this helps, Nicolas Noben http://noben.org/ http://idletogether.com/