Help with over all design.

[ashe91596]

I am tring to make some sort of data base that will allow me to use multiple
speadsheets in one print outable report. What i am dealing with is i have one
sheet that has the pricing of materials and three more that has part numbers
and what materials go into its packaging. i want to have a form where i can
input the quantity and part number and have the data base look up the part,
see what materials it uses, find the price of all of the materials, and
report each piece of materials with the cost and then add the cost. Is access
the best tool for this? And if anyone can help me figue this out it would be
so helpful.

 

[John W. Vinson]

I am tring to make some sort of data base that will allow me to use multiple
speadsheets in one print outable report. What i am dealing with is i have one
sheet that has the pricing of materials and three more that has part numbers
and what materials go into its packaging. i want to have a form where i can
input the quantity and part number and have the data base look up the part,
see what materials it uses, find the price of all of the materials, and
report each piece of materials with the cost and then add the cost. Is access
the best tool for this? And if anyone can help me figue this out it would be
so helpful.

Well... Excel handles spreadsheets. Access doesn't. They are VERY DIFFERENT
programs.

Access can certainly store all this information; let you build forms to input
it; create queries to filter, select, consolidate and sort data; and create
Reports to print it out. It won't do so using spreadsheets, though!

Check out some of the resources at:

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

A free tutorial written by Crystal (MS Access MVP):
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:
http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials

John W. Vinson [MVP]

 

[Steve]

Yes, Access can do this very well! The key is a properly designed set of
normalized tables. Consider starting with the following and modify as
needed:

TblPart
PartID
PartName
PartNumber

TblMaterialCategory
MaterialCategoryID
MaterialCategory

TblUnit
UnitID
Unit (inck, feet, ounce, pound or whatever)

TblMaterial
MaterialID
MaterialDescription
MaterialCategoryID

TblMaterialUnit
MaterialUnitID
MaterialID
UnitID
MaterialPricePerUnit

TblPartPackaging
PartPackagingID
PartID
MaterialUnitID
NumberOfUnits

TblCustomer
CustomerID
CustomerName
<<Other customer contact fields>>

TblOrder
OrderID
CustomerID
OrderDate

TblOrderDetail
OrderDetailID
OrderID
PartID
Quantity
Price

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