I need advice on calculation

[gno242]

I'm a newbie. Hard at learning, about 2 months in.

I have a need for a program and I'd be thankful if anyone could provide helpful advice.

This is what I threw together quickly

Widths my shop builds are 12' , 18', 20', 22', and 24'.
Lengths my shop builds are 20', 25', 30', 35', and 40'
heights my shop goes are 7' walls, 8' walls, 9', 10', 11', 12', 13', 14'
When going 13 or 14 ft there will be a special hidden charge for more supplies.
If you look at the program you can see which other options one may have.

I took a calculator tutorial I finished and modified it into this app. I left the calculator in the app, just in case someone custom needed to be tooken away or added. (the provided pricing in it is incomplete)

Then I got to thinking, why not simplify the process with this

Pricing of material change sometimes, so prices change. I believe it would be best to save all cost options into a database? I know some about sql, I can make it happen. What I lack here is the direction to go in coding these calculation process, the real behind the scenes work.

I was hoping someone may be so kind to provide an example for just one price route. Then I can review and duplicate that process.

For example. Lets say this customer chooses 12 wide and 20 deep, that calls for the base price of $595
Then they add 7 ft leg height to the price which calls $120
then they close both sides $350
then the back $400
then the front $400
and finally they add a 9x7 rollup $350

Are there any tutorials or things in specific someone could please point me in the direction, so that I may learn and understand this process.

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

This looks like a wonderfully large homework assignment.

You should know how to calculate surface area (Length X Width) or if you want to get both the top and bottom it's (Length X Width X 2) and to get the 4 side's it's (Height X Width X 2) + (Height X Length X 2), which'll get the four, that's the total surface area of all the sides of the box. Obviously you have options there two ends are open, so those calculations would need to be excluded.

I'm not sure what all else this thing's supposed to calculate, this isn't one of my strong suites so you'll need to explain what needs to be calculated and as you're doing so think about the math formulas you'll need to calculate each piece. Once you have that, it's much easier to translate those formulas into actual vb code.

 

[gno242]

edit

I was hoping someone could point me in the direct to what I should learn in specific to accomplish this.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm pretty horrible at writing, my strength is in speaking.

I apologize for what may seem like a cluster of wtf. lol

Basically I have a small shop that builds roof only steel structures. They have a base price for a certain size. 1 car size is 12' wide x 20' long x 5' tall (at the wall), the base price is $595. If someone wants to add height to that, lets say 2 extra feet, so that they have 7ft high, I'd add $120 to their price. After they add height, maybe they want to close the sides? I charge $350 to close both sides.

All my prices are set, I need a way to select them when called upon and have the program do the addition.

 

[newguy]

An idea, group the controls that belong to a section(Groupbox/Panel/etc...) of options - make these controls checkboxes and radio buttons for the ones that can't be selected when another is. Checkboxes can look like buttons by setting the appearance property. Then loop thru the checkboxes/radio buttons that belong to each container to find all the ones that were selected and add the amount to a variable, do the same for each group - add them up. Or at least something like that. HTH