How to include a graphical movie clip in an object

I am an experienced programmer, but an as3 OOP newbie. I am trying to FINALLY make the switch to authoring in OOP, but there is one hitch that I can’t wrap my head around. Perhaps someone can help explain.

For my first use of OOP, I wanted to make a “Dialogue box” object that I could share among multiple applications. This consists of a rectangle graphic with two dynamic text fields and a “close” button.

It seems that objects exist as “.as” files - but if I want to use graphics and textfields that I have created in the Flash UI, where do those go, and how do I refer to them? Do I have to make all my graphics programatically? Or do I have to include a copy of them in the library of every fla file that will be using my object?

I’m sorry if this is a stupid question - all the beginner’s OOP tutorials I’ve read don’t mention this, and I can’t figure out a way to google it!

thanks everybody…