VBA form question/guidance

[mbosch17]

Hey there, new to the forum. Been working on an excel project and I am having some difficulty figuring out how to go about what I need to do.

What I am trying to build is a program that lets a user select various options as they build a vehicle. And by selecting one engine, it grays out all other engine options. And so on down the list. And as the user is building, I would like to have a running total so they can see how much money they are currently at.

I would also like the ability to minimize sub assemblies once they are complete. For example, when the user is done with exterior options, all the options minimize and all you see is the subtotal for that sub assembly.

Is VBA and forms the correct way to go about this? I have a degree in mechanical engineering, but coding was always like an alien language to me. Is this something I can teach myself with some patience and a good book? Or am I diving in way over my head?

Any help, guidance, advice, warnings, etc. are very much appreciated!!

Thank you.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Gosh! Tricky one!

How much time do you have any what is the significance of error? If you have a real commercial dependency on this then I reckon you should pay someone to help you. Excel might not be the best application for this either. I can't say if it is or not, but a professional should be able to give you some guidance, provided that you give a good specification for what you are after.

But you seem to be on the right track. What you describe could be achieved using userforms and controls. I don't know where the parts and costs are stored. Perhaps that data belongs in a database (SQL), and hence you now have additional complexity to contend with.

I think you are describing a sexy sort of BoM tool. It's been done in Excel, but what you describe is a real project, and it may challenge even seasoned Excel developers. Proceed with caution.

Oh, and welcome to the forum. We're happy to help where we can, if you do decide to have a crack at it.

 

[mbosch17]

Jon...

Thank you for the response. I was afraid I was getting in over my head on this. I am always willing to learn, but I don't think I have the time to try and learn all that a project like this entails AND get it complete in a timely manner.

Any suggestions on literature I could follow as a walk through? As cliche as it may sound, the VBA programming for dummies looks like it really tries to explain things on a level non programmers could pick up on.

Thanks again for the quick reply! This is going to be a doozy any way I slice it.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Ok sure. I struggle with these recommendations because (a) I haven't read all of the books - I used to read everything but I just don't have the time anymore, (b) books are cool, but to be honest I didn't learn much more than 15% from books hence (c) I think your best resource is the internet and (d) last time I recommended my favourite one of the competitor authors got a bit upset.

A VBA book that I will recommend is the VBA Programmers Reference by Wrox. It's more of a dictionary really. I don't know when they last updated it. I know they did an Excel 2007 one. It doesn't really matter if it hasn't been updated for 2010/2016 - all you need is pretty much there.

If you want tutorial then I reckon you can pick just about anything - they're all pretty much the same, IMO (sorry to all the dear authors reading this that are probably going to unfriend me on twitter and facebook now).

Sorry, I know I'm being vague.