Hi Rob,

As I was going through some of the features, I discover that my out of the box software didn't feature the cost price, sale price as a default attribute for the product. This seemed weird as in the report tab of the dashboard their are plenty of reports "playing" with the attribute. Is that normal?

So, I felt the need to play the video about attributes again.

In the first part of it, you are discribing how we can add attributes from the tool / personalisation / setting window.

So I did, updated the attribute value enter a value for both prices and played with the reports. All worked fine.

Then I resumed the video where you are talking about updating the data base with price value once for all.

This starts in tool / personalisation / Product attributes.

Strangely there I see the cost price and the sale price appearing and because of a capital letter that is there and not in in the attribute added by me in the setting, I know for sure that they are likely not the consequences of what I did before.

Anyway, I go on, and open the excell sheet. There as mentionned in the video, I discover one tab for each of the manufacturer included in my library.

The limit of 255 tabs in Excell might appear as an explanation of the new system you implemented for the libraries, anyway off topic.

So I entered a price in there, updated my attribute and it is working perfectely as well.

Now back to the dashboard in the products tab. The table there doesn't show a colomn with sale an cost price but it does on your video. Is that a problem with me?

Another question, imagine the following scenario, I'm using a lot of blank panel for instance that are not comming from any of the manufacturers available from the library. I would use a blank panel comming out of the generics symbols.

Imagine now that I want to improve the quality of the product reports to get a purchase list that features the manufacturer name and ref.

I see two way to do that:

1 create a UDP from the generic blank panel and introduce there manufacturer name, reference, etc and then update other atributes from the excell sheet.
The down side of this is that I would have to add hundreds of products in the UDP which is seriously time consuming.

2 I could go into tool / personalisation / Product attributes and add the manufacturer name and reference as new editable attribut for all the parts. This would obviously be completely redundant for all the product as that information is already included in the data base, except for the generics.

What is your view on that?

A last question, what is happening to the values (prices) you entered into the table when you offload a library because you reached the end of your manufacturer allowance and you need to add another one?

Thanks

Christian

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Hi Chris

"Now back to the dashboard in the products tab. The table there doesn't show a colomn with sale an cost price but it does on your video. Is that a problem with me?"

If attributes are not showing in the Product Grid then yes, that is a problem. Can you send us the project file? Does the Attribute appear if you save the project, close it and re-open? Can you describe, step-by-step, exactly how to reproduce this?

Panels: yes, the recommended workflow would be to create a new UDP. A Product is a special thing with a well-defined data structure so if you want something to behave like a Product, in reports etc, it must be a product. The idea of adding a 'manufacturer' attribute would not work because it would be just that; an Attribute that happens to be called 'manufacturer' - this is not the same thing as the Manufacturer record that's defined in the database and used to identify that product.

Product Attributes Spreadsheet: we never overwrite or delete data from the Product Attributes spreadsheet. We only ever add records e.g. when you select a new manufacturer or an existing library is updated (in which case new records are appended to the existing data). Even if you remove a manufacturer from your selection, the data for that manufacturer will be left in the spreadsheet - it's your data and it would be wrong for us to delete it. If you want to remove a manufacturer from the spreadsheet you can just delete the Tab (worksheet) manually in Excel.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Hi Rob,

Lets start with the easy things!

1 thanks for my blank panel story, it is a usefull info for something completely different I'm working on. Surprise coming..be patient

2 Understood your explanation about the attribute database beeing updated. I still wonder what is going to happen when over the life of SD7 you opened more than 255 tabs in Excell, but it is surely not an emergency

3 Well, this is more complicated, cost attributes!

I send you the file by email.

First of all, you are right, saving my project did updated the product tab in the dashboard but now, I got 2 sales colum and 2 cost column !!!

So let me recap what I did:

As I checked the attribute feature of my freshly downloaded software I noticed that in the properties of a product in the right hand frame there was no attributes for the cost and sales price.

I create these attributes in tool/personalisation/setting using small letters: sale price, cost price.

I entered a value in that same right hand frame (drawing speaker block schematic LA4 amplifier, second from the top) and this value did appear in the cost reports. How the link between those newly created attributes and the information in the cost report was created, I have no idea.

Then I tried to introduce price permanently from tools/personalisation/product attributes. There I was surprised to discover that Cost Price and Sale Price where available but they had a capital letter. I introduced a value for one of the product (drawing capture son block shematic true systems P2 analog)

This is where I noticed that there was no column for cost and sales price in the dashboard products and made my first post.

As mentionned in the biginning of this reply, saving, closing and reopening sort that issue, but now I do have 2 cost price columns and 2 sale price columns.

Going back to the drawings now, the LA4 has only one sets of price attributes, but the true systems has 2.

In the dashboard product tab, you will notice that one price input is included into the the first set while the other is included in the second.

In reality it appears that the price attribute only appears in the property of a part when a value has been entered in the database. I understand now that the video missguided me as you introduce the addition of an attribute at the biginning of the video and since it didn't appeard in the list of available attributes (because I didn't entered a value yet) I created a redundant set.

Now the problem I have is that the report on costing has create a relationship with the attributes that I created and not with the ones that would pop up once a value has been entered in the database. As a result, the price of the true system equipment is not reflected in the report.

Hopefully I'm clear.

I will play around the file to come back to the default value. I hope I am not going to damage anything further.

I'll keep you informed of the results.

Christian

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Rob,

I deleted the attributes that I created in tools/personalisation/settings but the attributes remain present in the properties of the parts, the colums are still there in the product table and the cost report did not recreate the link to the database.

Is that shit affecting ony that project or stardraw entirely? In other words, are you able to do some magic on my file to sort that out or do I have to re-install stardraw? and if yes how is it going to behave when I reopen the same file?

Thanks for your help

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Rob,

Thanks for your answer.

just to make sure, you read my two posts of today, right? including the one that explaines how I get into that trouble?

I was wondering why the price attributes are only shown in the properties box if they are filled in. I would not have done that mistakes if I knew this.

I would have actually found interesting to be able to enter the price of a part there as well. The system with the excel sheet is verry interesting if you got a manufacturer price list in front of you, but as you rush into a project, placing a part and entering its price at the same time sounds cool.

Apparently once filled in, the value can be editted but this is project based as a change is not reflected in the price database.

This was certainly the result of a brainstorming from your side, however if you see a price that appear weird correcting it there and beeing able to force a sync with the database would be nice.

And what about a little pop up showing when the price was last update...SD8 will be perfect ;-)

now 213 products to remove and place again, love it !

Christian

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Hi Chris,

I'm trying to understand why Cost Price and Sale Price were not shown initially.

Can you post a screengrab of:

1. Tools | Personalization | Product Attributes dialog

2. Tools | Personalization | Setting dialog

I'd like to see what Attribute names are defined in these 2 areas.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Hi Rob,

I started a new project, here below is what you see as an product properties before you do anything:



So compaired to what appears into your video this is missing the cost and sale price so you go to add those attribute in settings:



There you notice it's missing so you add it!!! wrong!

Because when you want to edit the price strait from the database you discover this:



but as long as you didn't enter a value in the database, your product page looks like this:



which doesn't show any prices columns

after I included my set of price attribute the properties frame looks like this:



the prices you see there are the ones that I created, not the one of the database.

The properties frame shown below is the one of a product that has a database input:



There you can see that the attribute only appears in the properties frame when there is an input of the value in the database. And this is product related. a product without value will not be shown.

I understand I made something wrong but I was seriously missguided by the fact that your presentation make extensive use of product that has the price attributes populated in the database.

Hope it helps

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !