Question

I tried to do it but I get an error saying that model x was expected but y was passed in.

Answer 1

Yes. In fact you can use any class, but it has to match the @model declaration of your partial view.

Partial View:

@model partialViewModel
<h2>@Model.partialViewModelProperty</h2>

Main View:

@model mainViewModel
<h1>Model.mainViewModelProperty</h1>
@Html.Partial("_PartialView", new partialViewModel()
    {
         partialViewModelProperty = "A title"
    })