need direction. . . 1

[mmilbury]

For my work I am developing a program to monitor thicknesses of pipes and tanks at an asphalt refinery. I have records for the last thirty years and need to develop some way to view the data. Each report contains roughly 100 engineering drawings. Each drawing has 50-100 data points on it. The project I am working on needs to do the following:

1. Compare a specific point with a minimum thickness value, if its below thickness, write the point and thickness and corresponding drawing number to a table/form.

2. Create new "year." This is to make future (and past) entries possible.

3. Create new "object" where object is a tank or pipe or structure. We are currently upgrading our refinery to produce 7,000 barrels of asphalt MORE a day. This means we are going to be upgrading pipes and adding more.

4. Pull up the information of the object if needed. If its a pipe, pull up working pressure and fluid velocites and fluid type. For tanks, serial numbers/manufacturers etc.

What would be the best way to do this? I have limited knowledge in html, vb, assembly, and (gulp) FORTRAN. However, I am pretty computer savy so I can learn virtually language.

I have started making forms in Excel but I am afraid this might not work. Any input would be thoroughly appreciated.

----
An optimist sees the cup half full
A pessimist sees it half empty
An engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.

 

[atklinger]

mmilbury,
If you have all the records,
where do you have the records? in a spreadsheet? in a text file? in a data file?
If you have the records in a spreadsheet, (we) you can use Visual Basic 6, and (we) you can handle the records this way.
With a data or text file is easier, speaking with Visual Basic 6, and if you need make some drawings (we) can use AutoCAB VBA, all in one package.

Alberto

 

[jettt]

you'd better tell where are the records. If how the data are recorded known it is easy to build a programme that will work for you. I can help in using Delphi.

 

[ruinbab]

Have you concidered AutoCAD !

It has a VB interface which lets you develop programs that can interact with the drawing interface and that has all the usual powers of the VBA platform.

So, using VB, you could read the file (what-ever it's format is), do any calculations on it and even plot a visual result to the drawing interface.

One of my prior application was in the Mining area. It took the standard text file output of teodolyth (not sure of the spelling) from the surveyors, plotted all the points into AutoCAD and then did a triangulation with them to draw the mine's outline.


Marcel, the cad man!

Ruinbab
jcema@rocketmail.com