how can I add feet and inches?

[Guest]

Somebody please help this inferior filemaker user want-to-be.

I have two fields: Feet inches

For example, the data may be entered like so:

5 feet 2.25 inches

6 feet 1.75 inches

9 feet 11.25 inches

8 feet 6.50 inches

All inch data will be in one-quater inch increments. I just simply want to add or summarize feet and inches into one field. Could someone please explain to me in elementary terms how to do this.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Keith M. Davie]

"how can I add feet and inches?" - eat your spinach and don't smoke.

Seriously, there is a techinfo document at FMI for calculating square feet. Whether or not that will provide you with clues on how to sum feet and inches, I don't know. I have not tried so sum feet and inches, so I cannot speak from experience. There may be someone who has a better answer, but until then you may want to look at: http://www.filemaker.com/ti/102148.html

[RussBaker]

For adding feet and inches, create Total Feet and Total Inches calc fields (number).

Total Feet = Int((12*(FeetA + FeetB) + InchesA + InchesB)/12)

Total Inches = Round(12*(FeetA + FeetB) + InchesA + InchesB - 12 * Total Feet,2)

If you want to summarise, create summary fields which total the feet and inches respectively, and then do similar math on them.

[Guest]

Thanks very much for the reply!

Sad to say that I'm not doing something right. Let me emphasize that I'm a FM moron. I created a feet field (number) and inch field (number). I'm confused about "Feet A", Feet B", "Inch A", and "Inch B". Would you be so kind as to write out step by step how to create? Thanks so much for your patience and sharing your expertise!

[RussBaker]

My answer assumed that you have several feet and inches fields in the one record (FeetA, FeetB etc). It then added these up.

If you only have one feet and one inch field per record and what you are trying to do is to add up the various records, then you will need either Summary calculations or a self join relationship to total up the relevant records.

Which one are you trying to do? If you want to send me an email, I can flick a demo file back to you (v5).