Wood Sizes¶

A new calculator is available for wood slats.
This allows the program to generate stock transactions for wood slat blinds, by using dummy fabric codes with calculator = Wood slat.

There are three main wood components that make up a wood blind: valance, slat and bottom bar.
There will only be one valance and one bottom bar used per blind, but the number of slats will depend on the drop size of the blind.
This will be selected from Administration > System Tables > Venetian Slats.

Valances, slats and bottom bars are bought in from suppliers and held as stock items.
They are bought as different lengths, in 6-inch increments from 3’ (36 inches, 914mm) to 10’ (120 inches, 3048mm).
Because they are relatively high value items, the 6” increments are all held as individual stock items.
As well as this there are different colours of wood used, which means more codes.
As there are two different slat sizes, 25mm and 50mm.

Wood slat stock codes should be held in the following format:

W1GO30 25mm Golden Oak 3’ slat
W2GO30 50mm Golden Oak 3’ slat
W3GO30 25mm Golden Oak B/bar
W4GO30 50mm Golden Oak B/bar
W5GO30 25mm Golden Oak Valance
W6GO30 50mm Golden Oak Valance

The first two letters determine the wood size and type:

W1 = 25mm slat
W2 = 50mm slat
W3 = 25mm bottom bar
W4 = 50mm bottom bar
W5 = 25mm valance
W6 = 50mm valance

The third and fourth characters determine the wood colour:

GO = Golden Oak
Etc

The fifth and sixth letters determine the width of the wood

30 = 3’ (36 inches)
35 = 3’ 6” (42 inches)
…
95 = 9’ 6” (114 inches)
10 = 10’ (120 inches)

There are also dummy stock codes set up, W1GO and W2GO and these will have link option = fabric.
A new calculator called Woodslat will be used.
This means that when a detail line is entered for a wood blind, one of these dummy stock codes is selected when the fabric is chosen.
If the detail line has link option = fabric and calculator = woodslat, the program will look up the (new) table below and append the code to the dummy code to produce the stock item that will be used.

The new table will be held in Administration > System Tables > Wood Sizes.

Width of blind (max) Imperial Code
762 3’ 30
1066 3’ 6” 35
1219 4’ 40
1371 4’ 6” 45
1524 5’ 50
1676 5’ 6” 55
1829 6’ 60
1981 6’ 6” 65
2134 7’ 70
2286 7’ 6” 75
2438 8’ 80
2591 8’ 6” 85
2743 9’ 90
2896 9’ 95
3048 10’ 10

So if a blind is entered with a width of 2000mm, and the fabric/slat chosen is W2GO, the program will calculate the following stock transactions in the bill of materials:

W2GO70 x number of slats in blind
W4GO70 x 1
W6GO70 x 1

It is now possible to work out substitute slats automatically in the order entry program.
At the moment the system works out the correct slat size, bottom bar size and valance size.
If the required size is not available (not enough in stock in hand), then the next size up should be used.
For example, if the system works out that a 25mm Balmoral wood blind needs 20 W1CG45 slats, 1 W3CG45 bottom bar and 1 W5CG45 valance.
The system now checks that these are available – if not, then the next size up is selected. This updates what appears in the options as well.
If a W1CG45 is not available, then the system checks to see if a W1CG50 is available and so on.
The order of sizes is held in the wood sizes table in Administration > System Tables.
Also for the customers that manufacture the wood blinds and so we have set up the stock records with W1 – W6 style codes.

W1 = 25mm slat
W2 = 50mm slat
W3 = 25mm bottom bar
W4 = 50mm bottom bar
W5 = 25mm valance
W6 = 50mm valance

The only problem is that they use the same valances for 25mm and 50mm blinds.
At the moment if we enter W1xx As a fabric, it will select W1xxyy as the slat, W3xxyy as the valance and W5xxyy as the valance.
If W2xx is entered, then it will find W2xxyy, W4xxyy and W6xxyy.
This is hardcoded into the system at the moment.

We need to get W2xx to find W5xxyy instead of W6xxyy.
Therefore we have created a new table in System Tables called ‘Wood Codes’.
It has fields for blind type, slat code, bottom bar code, valance code.
It could have entries like this:

25mm Wood, W1, W3, W5
50mm Wood, W2, W4, W5

When doing the ‘Wood slat’ calculator, if there is a record for the blind type in this table, it will select the W? codes.

Order Processing > Orders > Wood Default Options

Previously, the default Slat Valance and Bottom Bar options that are set for wooden Venetians via the Wood Sizes system table were not editable.
If you tried and change an option, it would automatically reset itself back to the default option.
However, it is possible for a customer to want their valance or bottom bar to be a different colour from the rest of the blind.
It is now possible to change the option so it will not be reset to the default if another option is changed.

Wood Codes

It is now possible to specify alternative Bottom Bar and Valance codes for wood Venetians.
There are two new columns in the Wood Codes system table for ‘Alternative Bottom Bar Code’ and ‘Alternative Valance Code’.

In the example below, we have W4 as the bottom bar code and W6 as the valance code. We could have W16 as the alternative bottom bar code and W18 as the alternative valance code.
When an order for a wood blind is processed, the program will first try and match the original Bottom Bar (W4) code and Valance code (W6) with the colour to select the valance and bottom bar stock item.
However, if no stock code matches these codes, then it will attempt to use the alternative Bottom Bar code (W16) and alternative Valance Code (W18) to match stock items with the colour.

The exact logic is as follows.

1. The system first looks into the ‘Wood Codes’ system table for the blind type selected and gets a part of the stock code from ‘Slat Code’, ‘Bottom Bar’ or ‘Valance Code’ fields depending on what option is found.
2. If nothing is found anything in (1), the program analyses the first part of the fabric/colour code chosen in the order detail. This is hardcoded (W1 – W9) but is represented like this.

Two (or three) first characters in Fabric/Color Code selected Slat Bottom Bar Valance
W10 W10 W11 W12
W1 W1 W3 W5
W2 W2 W4 W6
W7 W7 W8 W9

3. If something is found in (1) or (2) then the program looks into the ‘Wood Sizes’ system table to get another part of the searched stock item that is held in the ‘Slat Code’, ‘Valance Code’ and ‘Bottom Bar’ fields accordingly.
It tries to find a record with the nearest width and it forms a new stock item code.
Then the program checks a stock item by the stock code that was formed and checks if ‘Stock In Hand’ value > 0 (but only if the ‘Use Substitution’ is switched on for the blind type).
If this condition is false, i.e. we didn’t find a stock item at all or ‘Stock In Hand’ value less or equal to 0 (for ‘Use Substitution’ blind types only), the program gets the next record by width from the ‘Wood Sizes’ table.
If it does not find a stock item at all, it then looks in the relevant alternative field and tries to use that.
If there is not enough stock in hand for it and ‘Use Substitution’ is true, it should look at the next record by width.

4. If it doesn’t find the stock item is 3, the program finds a record with the nearest width in the ‘Wood Sizes’ table but ignores the ‘Stock In Hand’ value for ‘Use Substitution’ blinds as it was in (3).

The wood slat calculation has been made smarter so the required slat size is recalculated when not all stock options are available.
To do this, Blindata uses the existing Wood Sizes table to find the correct Slat, Valance or B/Bar Code.
If no existing slat, valance or bottom bar stock item exists for that code size for the Blind Type, then Blindata checks the next size up that is available.
For example, if a blind is ordered that needs a slat size 50, but only stock 80 size slats exist, then Blindata will check from 50 and select the 80 sizes as the slat and put this into the BOM.
Lastly, for slats, if the selected size is double or greater than the original size, then the number of slats required on the works order and in the BOM is divided by two and rounded up to the nearest whole slat.
This is because the larger slats can be cut down to make two smaller slats.
For example, if a blind is ordered that requires 12 ‘40’ size slats, but only ‘80’ size slats are available, then Blindata should assign 6 ‘80’ size slats on the works order and BOM.