Accessing a method from an outside Class

Question

I am working on a program that will create an array list and hashmap of 3 shapes--squares,triangles and circles. I have created classes for each shape as well as a class that creates arrays of these shapes (called ShapeGenerator).
Now I need to create a class that will call ShapeGenerator to create the shapes and then put them into an arraylist and hashmap. Right now I just can't get seem to call the methods from ShapeGenerator to create the arrays. What follows is the code I've written. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks in advance...
public class ShapeMaker{
     public ShapeMaker(){
public ShapeGenerator[] makeShapes(){
     ShapeGenerator[] myShapeGenerator = new ShapeGenerator();
     myShapeGenerator.createSquares(5);
     return createSquares;
public static void main(String[] args){
     ShapeMaker mySM = new ShapeMaker();
     mySM.makeShapes();
     System.out.println("I made a Shape");
}

Answer 1

ShapeGenerator[] myShapeGenerator = new ShapeGenerator();
new ShapeGenerator will return a single instance of ShapeGenerator - Not an array.
to create a new ShapeGenerator:
ShapeGenerator sg=new ShapeGenerator();
then your method call:
Object squares[]= sg.createSquares(5);
or you could just do:
Object squares[]=new ShapeGenerator().createSquares(5);
makeShapes() should then return an array of Object (or even better do you have a base Shape class?)
So we finally end up with something like:
public class ShapeMaker{
public ShapeMaker(){
public Object[] makeShapes(){
ShapeGenerator myShapeGenerator = new ShapeGenerator();
return myShapeGenerator.createSquares(5);
public static void main(String[] args){
ShapeMaker mySM = new ShapeMaker();
mySM.makeShapes();
System.out.println("I made a Shape");
Excuse any typos but I have not tried to compile this as I don't have a myShapeGenerator etc and I'm too tired (or lazy) to write one.
Good luck.