I am working on a program that will help the person who does school scheduling layout the master schedule, teacher schedule and student schedule.

I have the master schedule and teacher schedule figured out.

In the master schedule (table) each room and period is equal to one record hence each room has 50 records in the master schedule table because we have 10 periods in a day and there are 5 days in a week.

The teacher schedule (table) is analogous to the master schedule. Each teacher has 50 records the teacher table. 1 record for each period of the week.

I have it set up so that when class is entered in the master schedule, the teacher who teaches that class will appear in both the master schedule and the teacher's schedule.

I set up both the master schedule and the teacher schedule to print in a matrix like format by making a layout with 5 columns (1 column for each day of the week, 10 periods each day). This part works well.

I am working on a student schedule (table) that lets the user make a student schedule by entering classes and having the times, locations and teacher appear. This is done through a related field and a portal.

In the related field which is also a repeating field I can enter the classes and ( it pulls it from the master schedule ) it shows me the time, and locations of when that class meets. It even lays it out in chronological order.

My problem is that as close as I am to a solution I need this portal to read like a (matrix) or an actual student schedule. Any suggestions??

For my FM6 scheduling module, I ended up using a form layout with a visual representation of a table, then a separate relationship for each day/time slot, showing the related Class fields through those relationships. It's a lot of relationships (50 in your case,) but everything is then in the correct spot.

If you were sure to have 50 related records every time, you could simply use 5 portals based on 5 relationships (or one relationship, if you start the rows at 1, 11, 21, 31, and 41.) This would certainly be more efficient than 50 relationships. You just have to ensure that the portals are sorted correctly and related records are not removed, so that per 9 does not end up in per 8's slot, etc.