Please Help!

[abomb]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for any help in advance. I am not new to FM, but am still unsure about how to structure my database. This new one is more complex than any of the others I have created. I am trying to "reproduce" a database system we have now that dates to around 1986. It is a price estimating database and I'll try and explain this as clearly as possible.

We recieve an inquiery from a customer for prices. These inquieries may have one item or several, but each has one estimate number. I currently have two tables; Estimates and Item Number. These are linked through an Estimate number that is auto entered. On Estimates I have a portal that allows creation of a record in Item so each item is saved and linked to a unique estimate number. So far this works exactly how I want it to. Now it gets confusing.

For each item we have 14 different categories to choose from. Each has different information needed to produce them.

In my head I see it like this. On Estimate Layout, enter general information like item number and quanitiy. This is stored in Item table. then when you need to identify the specific item category, a window or something comes up to enter in dimensions and so forth. This is stored in its own table but related to Item so that all work done on a specific Item is stored in the same place. I don't really care how it looks for the user because this is all internal but I would like to work. Any suggestions or changes would be most helpful. I hope this is not to confusing.