Where to Start?

[mduff]

I'm a c# Developer for a company that has an existing bid/estimating system on top of SQL Server. Like PS, our Bid design uses a folder tree with unlimited nesting of sub-folders to group parts that are assigned to an area of an architectural drawing.

We have 25,000+ part SKUs in a growing and constantly changing parts table. They are categorized by color, material type, etc. and include kits/assemblies. Pricing is different for different customers and, even for a single customer, prices fluctuate within part category based on the volume being quoted.

I need to:

1) Use our live, real-time list of parts and kits (assemblies) as the items available for assignment to take offs. We would like to automate the organization and incremental population of the Templates and Assemblies stores. For example, the end user chooses the “Black” folder, and then the “Yellow Pine” sub-folder and after the “Cabinets” folder is opened I capture that event of an expansion of a leaf on the folder tree and then fill the Templates and Assemblies lists with only our black, yellow pine cabinet SKUs.

2) Adjust global price assignments as volumes of part category taken-off increase

3) Push the data resulting from take-off activities back into our external database

My confusion is that with so many options for customization, I don't know whether to use scripting, COM/OLE, write a plugin, SwiftMarket Desktop or some other option to fully automate and customize our PS implementation. I don't know what purposes the different options serve.

[BET]

Well, that is a great question.... and based on what you are looking to do. using the com object model would be the way you would want to go. The Scripting engine is very powerful but lacks many of the components you are looking for.

You currently are not able to capture the folder expand event w/in planswift. you would have to build that part of the application in your application. (another reason why com would be the better way to go).



Regards,

BET