Calculating afterwards

[Elly]

I have one layout, with many calculationfields. It's for calculating prices for cardboard packaging. Choises for different machinery, printed or not, etc. etc.

Is there a possibility in FM to make first all the choices and then start the calculations? Now the screen is being build-up (very slow because of the calculations I think) everytime one choice is made, and also when you leave the screen(layout) and come back to it again later.

[dbruggmann]

One possibility is to remove all your calculation fields from the layout. Then create for each of them a number (or text) field and put it on the layout. Now create a script, which you push after having made all your choices. This script would then populate the number (or text or date) fields by using the

[Ugo DI LUCA]

As it seems it recalculate when opening the layout, I think what happens here is that you may have statistical fields on the layout.

This said, yes you could use a script to do this, involving either the field themselves or global fields.

I'd tend to use the second method, where both the fields and calcs would be entered by script, which would make it easier to check that the "calculations" have been submitted.

Basically, in order to keep good performances, you should always "limit" the use of cross-related calculations. Having them scripted also offers a way to index them for quick search later on.

[cjaeger]

I did something similar in just copying the the database and converting th relevant fields into globals.

Values are transferred between the original db and the global clone with scripts.

Another way is to define each calc as

if (calculate="on", my calculation, ""), with global field calculate which is set by a button.

Another way is to define those fields as a lookup or calculated text field, then do a relookup to change values (best performance, but be careful which records are in found set)

[Elly]

Thanks for the contributions/solutions! I'm going to try what will work best for us!