- Oct 9, 1999
- 15,031
- 14
- 81
I'm a mechanical engineer with little programming experience besides what I did in college 8 years ago. I'd like to limit the amount of "coding" that I need to do to solve this problem. Don't have access to Visual Basic, but do have Access as well as Matlab, fwiw.
I work on a team of about 6 or 7 engineers. Currently we are not doing well with tracking our designs, each of us may put together or own spreadsheet to list drawings numbers (which don't follow a common format), or what items make up an assembly, or what items go into a product, such as the number of nuts, bolts, washers, etc. The problem here is that if someone is not around, or quits, it is harder to track down what they did if it's ever needed again. There is commercial software available to do what we need, but it is very expensive, and also vastly OVER powered, much of it covers the whole of manufacturing, which we don't need.
So I would like to be able to do this. Have a network accessible data that each engineer can go into and get a new, non-duplicated part number to assign to his widget. Because there are only a handful of us, Access should be able to handle this, I don't think we need an SQL type database. Now he uses this number to create his drawing, as well as to create a new entry in the database that lists the name of the drawing, the date, the revision, notes, etc. So I have no duplication of part numbers, and each engineer can look up what the other engineer did.
Now that sounds easy enough, but say this widget is made up of 3 other smaller gadgets, as well as 4 washers and 4 nuts. Each of those 3 gadgets, each washer, and each nut needs a part number, description, etc (An assembly) I want the engineer to be able to:
1. Assign new part numbers to each new gadget
2. Find the existing part numbers for the washers and nuts, because they are common items, or create a new part number if it is a special style of washer or nut.
3. Attach the part numbers for the gadget, washers, and nuts, to the entry for the larger widget.
4. Be able to query the database and find out two things, A: where an item is used, and B: how many times is an item used in a specific assembly
So we produce many numbers of widgets, which are made up of multiple gadgets, each gadget may or may not be made up of its own pieces, and we use many common items which are repeated often across many widgets.
We COULD use our CAD software to do some of this, but it would not assign unique part numbers, and it would require modeling EVERYTHING that goes into a widget, such as the zip ties that we need 50 of, or the latch that is purchased from a supplier, or the power cable that comes with another device, etc.
So my questions are:
1. Can Access handle this type of database, WITHOUT any additional VB front end programming? Access has tables to create databases, forms to input data to the database, and reports and queries to get information out of the database.
2. How hard would this be to do?
3. Any advice on other ways to do this?
Thanks for all your help in advance
I work on a team of about 6 or 7 engineers. Currently we are not doing well with tracking our designs, each of us may put together or own spreadsheet to list drawings numbers (which don't follow a common format), or what items make up an assembly, or what items go into a product, such as the number of nuts, bolts, washers, etc. The problem here is that if someone is not around, or quits, it is harder to track down what they did if it's ever needed again. There is commercial software available to do what we need, but it is very expensive, and also vastly OVER powered, much of it covers the whole of manufacturing, which we don't need.
So I would like to be able to do this. Have a network accessible data that each engineer can go into and get a new, non-duplicated part number to assign to his widget. Because there are only a handful of us, Access should be able to handle this, I don't think we need an SQL type database. Now he uses this number to create his drawing, as well as to create a new entry in the database that lists the name of the drawing, the date, the revision, notes, etc. So I have no duplication of part numbers, and each engineer can look up what the other engineer did.
Now that sounds easy enough, but say this widget is made up of 3 other smaller gadgets, as well as 4 washers and 4 nuts. Each of those 3 gadgets, each washer, and each nut needs a part number, description, etc (An assembly) I want the engineer to be able to:
1. Assign new part numbers to each new gadget
2. Find the existing part numbers for the washers and nuts, because they are common items, or create a new part number if it is a special style of washer or nut.
3. Attach the part numbers for the gadget, washers, and nuts, to the entry for the larger widget.
4. Be able to query the database and find out two things, A: where an item is used, and B: how many times is an item used in a specific assembly
So we produce many numbers of widgets, which are made up of multiple gadgets, each gadget may or may not be made up of its own pieces, and we use many common items which are repeated often across many widgets.
We COULD use our CAD software to do some of this, but it would not assign unique part numbers, and it would require modeling EVERYTHING that goes into a widget, such as the zip ties that we need 50 of, or the latch that is purchased from a supplier, or the power cable that comes with another device, etc.
So my questions are:
1. Can Access handle this type of database, WITHOUT any additional VB front end programming? Access has tables to create databases, forms to input data to the database, and reports and queries to get information out of the database.
2. How hard would this be to do?
3. Any advice on other ways to do this?
Thanks for all your help in advance
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