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Data base/worksheet help


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Hey, hope someone can help.

I've attached a record to many items in a drawing and created a report using this record. Ok so far. One of the fields in this record is a key to finishes build ups, for example "F05".

Another work sheet contains information about "F05"

I need the report to read the finishes column, look up the associated text string with that code and put it in the cell adjacent. i.e. where a cell reads F05, I need the cell next to it to display text about F05, like ?3mm gypsum skim with 2 coat paint finish?.

An alternative solution might be to use the record itself somehow? Maybe? If I could get a field in a record to be dependent on the input of another field, I could get it to work. I think. Is this possible? Basically I have a lot of finishes, with long descriptions, and I don?t want to have to keep pasting in long text strings to a field. It would be much more powerful to put in a 3 digit code (or something), which then references somehow a finish key with a longer description. This way, when the finishes change, I just change the text description and don?t have to go into the record of each element to which it is assigned.

I?ve tried using the space tool with its simple assign finishes tool but it?s simply not flexible enough (rooms with many more than four walls, multiple finishes on different walls, etc.etc).

Anyone this good?

Thanks for your help

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Thanks for your suggestion. I tried an "if,then,or" argument but as the list of finishes grew, it became very difficult to manage. The ?or? became another ?if,then,or? argument, which itself had another ?if,then,or? agument as its ?or? etc.etc. for every finish. It was ok, but when we added more stuff it became difficult.

Thanks again though,

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If I understand correctly what you are after, I don't think it is realistically doable.

What you appear to be after is what relational databases or ?lookup table? -type of things do. Unfortunately, there is no Lookup function in VW's function arsenal for worksheets. No-one knows why not.

There are things that could be done via scripting to emulate the result of the said functionality, but they tend not to work in the real world. Unfortunately the better approach, using an external relational database to generate the reports, does not work either, in the said frustrating place.

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There are things that could be done via scripting to emulate the result of the said functionality, but they tend not to work in the real world.

This may be true.

In my world the end-user and scripter are one in the same, with the exception of just one other user in the office.

I'd write a script that runs through each object that has the first record attached.

It would read the data in the finish key field and replace it with the recipe. So you'd see 1,2,3 etc in the worksheet until you ran the script. (I might lose the 'F' in the finish key and try a case statement to get rid of all the iffing and elsing.)

In the real world you might be able to hire someone to write this, but then you'd probably need to hire him again every time you added a new finish.

The end-user/scripter would just mod the script.

The other downside would be remembering to run it every time you made a pertinent change in the drawing.

Myself, I'd have no problem running the script right before any output.

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