Back to development

The new website is up and running. Basically it’s the same content with a refreshed view. I’ve added a forum for the support and comments on Modellers Assistant. Now I’m not expecting this to be a very active forum as it is specific to Modellers Assistant, but it does provide an additional support line for customers.

Now it’s time to get back to development of Modellers Assistant. The last update was done in January to fix a small problem with the tables. This time some new features will be added, just what I haven’t decided yet. I need to have a look at my hit list of features to see what is the most useful.

One thing I would like to do is to make some internal changes to the table formats. There is an amount of duplicated data that can be consolidated. The problem with this kind of change is that it can take a long time to make the changes with very little advantage from the customers point of view as they don’t see the benefit from the change, i.e. nothing new. I shall have a quick investigation into the impact of the change and then take a call as to whether it is worth it at the moment.

General Update

My last blog post was back in September 2007. So what has been happening since September?

Modellers Assistant is completed and has gone to market. Todate the vast majority of sales have been upgrades from Painters Assistant but I am hopeful that sales will pick up as the product matures.

Since the release 2 data updates have been released. The initial release saw 49 manufacturers in the database – the last update that figure was increased to 74. More importantly the number of Aftersales items listed was 3533 in the original release – the lats update this increased to 5476. It’s similar story with the number of kits listed – the original release had 3668 kits listed, the last update this was increased to 10178. Hopefully this shows the potential customers that Modellers Assistant is not a static product but continues to grow.

All the data statistics are on the website www.modellersassistant.co.uk which itself gets an average of 70 hits a week.

So what’s next? Currently I am rebuilding the website. I want to incorporate a forum and access to this blog. The forum is to provide support and interaction for the customers interested or owing Modellers Assistant. It won’t be a modelling forum as there are a number of these already on the internet and they do a wonderful job. The blog link is to provide a less formal update on the progress of Modellers Assistant and the data. When a new set of data is released or some program updates are done then the news page on the website will give all the information as well as a prosting in the forum.

Once the new website is up and running then my attention will turn back to the program to add some new features. What features will appear depends upon how I get on with the logic so there is no detail for now other than there will be some new features appearing soon.

Whilst I’m doing the coding there won’t be any major data updates. I may be able to find time to update or add a few manufacturers but it won’t be a large update.

That’s all for now. Hopefully I can get a blog update written at least once a week.

Been quiet for a while – here’s an update

Well I have been quiet for a few weeks because I have been hard at work trying to get Modellers Asistant finished. The news is that I’m nearly there. With any luck it should be ready in the next few weeks.

Since my last post I have managed to complete some new features – Project of Projects, new reports and a report viewer, Web Links has been revamped.

Project of Projects gives the ability for the modeller to break down a large project into several smaller ones. Each has it’s own project list (paints, kits, etc.) but also has a link to other projects that it is related to. The relationships are managed on their own tab. The project tab also has a sub-tab for projects of projects to show it’s position in the family.

The old reports left a lot to be desired so these have been reworked into a new set that are easier to read. The reports use Crystal Reports for the creation of the reports. The Crystal Reports Viewer has been added to the program under it’s own tab. The chosen report can be viewed prior to printing or exporting to other applications. Reports are available for all the lists (project, stock, and shopping). Three reports are available for each list – simple report as it appears in the program datagridviews, and two grouped reports by product and manufacturer. More detailed reports may appear in future updates.

The Internet Links tab has been given a face lift with the ability to create collections of internet links. This allows the modeller to create various collections to suite there needs. For example, a collection can be created for model shop sites, another collection for reference sites, another for forums, etc.. The collections can be associated with one or more projects as a reference link. This builds the projects to have not just the products for the project, but also associates relevant collections to the project. The same ability has been added to the PDF catalogues allowing them to be associated with one or more projects.

Currently I’m working on the help system for Modellers Assistant. This will be in two forms – a PDF of the documentation and an online help with context links for the relevant help section for the current sction focus.

Once this has finished there are just a couple more jobs to be done and then Modellers Assistant should be ready for the market. 

Progress made

Some real progress has really been made in the past couple of weeks. The kits and bits tab page has been completed and added to the stock, shopping, and project lists. This means that a major new component has been added to the program. This is what the program is really about – the model kits, after sales items, paints, and tools to make the kit.  The database for the kits and after sales items is a matrix of what kit has what after sale item and visa versa.

Also added to the program is a feature that allows the block addition of items to any list. This is in response to feedback of some people that purchased Painters Assistant. The block addition feature makes adding many items to the projects, stock and shopping lists a lot easier. In essence any item from any category can be added to any list.

All in all it has been a busy couple of weeks but there has been some major advancements that take me closer to the final product. 

What a nightmare

Well it has been a difficult time lately. With heavy rain sweeping the country I have been faced with pumping flood waters from around the house twice in a week. Fortunately we haven’t had the floods as bad as some in the country. The house wasn’t flooded but the damp course was breached which could have led to further problems. Once was bad enough but twice in a week took a lot out of me. Now I need to improve the drainage to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

On the programming front I have managed to make some progress.  I’m currently working on the internals of the program with caching the data for display. Which led me to an issue with images. I am displaying a small thumbnail picture but don’t want to distribute several hundreds of images either with the program or as an update. The answer is to embed the images in a database. Though Access will store images there is no native image format for a field to support it. Access does allow you to create an OLE Object for the image and then relies upon in built routines or plugins to display the image. This works fine within Access but as I’m reading the db from an external program there is an issue as Access wraps an OLE header to the image making it unusable.

 After some digging I managed to find some sources as to how to get around the problem. The trick is to write the image to the database from the external program and let the external program handle the field type as long binary data. Whilst the image is unusable within Access this doesn’t matter to me as I only want to store the image and let my program reference it.

 I created a utility that allows me to upload images into the database and it will read them back aswell to verify that they are usable. The database that was created stores about 1000 images and is currently about 15MB in size. This is a down side to storing images in a database as it is bloated out. But when comparing the database to the source directories I noticed that this was only a couple of megs larger so I feel it is an acceptable trade off. I can now distribute a database of images instead of several hundreds of individual files. It was interesting to note that using a zip file not only added more complication in extracting the image but there was little saving in disk space.

Now I need to incorporate the database read routine into Modellers Assistant so that the image is read from the database rather than from the directory. Trials on update downloads showed that the database takes about 1 and half minutes to download via FTP which again I feel is acceptable.

Back to coding

Well it’s back to the coding as I have finished entering the Eduard data. Just over 5000 items were entered for the Eduard current catalogue and identified out of production items. I have started to work on the matrix of what after sales part is for what kit. This will have to be an ongoing process and be done alongside the coding. I have done some of the matrix to give me some data to work with.

Picked up the coding yesterday after a break of nearly 2 weeks doing data. When an item is selected from the manufacturers list the corresponding aftersales part, mask, or decal is displayed in 2 listboxes. The entry in the listboxes can then be selected to view the information about that item. One listbox is for decals and masks, the other is for aftersales parts. As the data that is displayed in the listboxes can point to different types of extras or kits I want to group similar items together. For example if you are viewing an etched kit for a model it will list in the aftsales listbox the models that it is for and if it is part of a set of aftersales parts, so I want to group the kits together and the sets together – both being sorted. The default sorting for a listbox has no flexibility. I managed to figure a way around the problem by grouping the relevant information in an arraylist and then sorting the array and finally adding the arraylist to the listbox in the order that I want it.

Next stage is to work on the popup form for the selected item from the listbox.

Just data

Since my last article I have started the Kits and Bits coding. First was some adjustments to the interface as whilst building the database some new fields have been added and these needed to be displayed on the form. The coding has also been started on populating the new form controls with the data. The coding has stopped for a few days to get some decent data into the database.

Previously I only had Tamiya kits in the database and through much research have managed to list just over 1200 kits for Tamiya (current catalogue, in circulation, and out of production). Over the past few weeks I have added kits for A+V Models, A Call to Arms, A Model, AA Kits, AB Figures, and Academy. Though these are the current catalogue only. I have recently added the 705 kits for Italeri (current catalogue, in circulation, and some out of production). There is nearly 3000 kits in the database.

The past few days has seen the addition of the Eduard aftersales parts. This has been a major addition to the database – some 2795 kits from the current catalogue only. There is still some further research to be done to include the in circulation and out of production kits. Eduard offer a BIG series of kits that are collections of several other Eduard offerings (colour photo etched, photo etched, and masks) in a reduced priced bundle. These items are in the database but are not included in the tally as they would be a duplicate count. I’m now entering the masks from Eduard and then the kits.

Once the Eduard data is completed then the coding will continue on the kits and bits. Since I’m over 2/3′rds through the data then the coding should be resumed roughly the middle of next week.

Milestone hit

Finally a major milestone has been hit for me. I have finished the conversion of the Painters Assistant colour handling code for Modellers Assistant. Now the handling of paint processing is complete with the stock management system and with the new table layouts and form functions.

Now I’m moving on to the new functions for the Kits and Bits. Hopefully this should slot straight into the existing code. Much of the code conversion has been to allow for the kits and bits handling so now is the time that I’ll see how the code can handle it. I’ve had to make some changes to the form as it needs to display some additional information. This took a while to do as it was a battle to fit everything into the space provided.

The delays in the conversion process were mainly down to the inclusion of the stock management system into the program. This took 4 attempts to complete as the concept could not be applied to all the process handling. The stock management design always seemed to become troublesome when a purchase of an item was performed. Either the purchase could not determine what the item was for (project, stock, over allocation, etc,) or the processing was too complex. In the end I had to compromise on a simplier system that provides the same functionalty but with simplier code.

Now to continue with the Kits and Bits processing.  

Busy week, again

Once again another busy week. Though the kids went back to school part of the week was spent catching up on some jobs around the house and garden. I’ve finished decorating the kitchen. I don’t which I dislike the most – painting a ceiling or tiling. Anyway the kitchen is finished – well I just need to do the glossing of the door frames.

In the garden I managed to get the some new fence panels and replaced the fencing at the bottom of the garden. Strangely there is a shortage of fence panels in the UK. I had to order the panels and they took 4 weeks to arrive. It appears that the panels are all imported and so are shared out amongst the many retailers.

With working on two major jobs left little time for programming or research. However, what I have managed to do is to complete the coding for the new add/update buttons on the colour libraries tab. The new code will be tested today to make sure it is doing what it is supposed to do. Much of the code is based upon original code that performed a smiliar function so in theory should work. If everything is OK then the code can be copied for the other colour libraries tabs on the other two lists.

No new kits or manufacturers added to the database but I have reached a decision about the information. The problem I am faced with is that there are hundreds of manufacturers of models, decals, aftersales parts, and so on. I could spend months adding in data and the release of the program would be held up waiting for data. What I am going to do is build the database with the major players of the market place and as many of the other manufacturers as I can fit in given the time. Then add in other manufacturers as I can after the release and make the data available on update. This means that the pressure is off to create a database that is nearly 100% from the outset. I am going to write in an automatic update into the program so delivery of additional data would be a lot easier.

And the band played on

Sorry just reliving my love of Saxon there – shows how old I am? Another bank holiday weekend here in the UK and it rained and rained and rained and rained. We didn’t need to go to the coast as it came to us with so much rain. The waether improved on the Tuesday and we went to the coast anyway. Took some great photos and had a relaxing couple of days.

Now back into the throws of developing I’m working on the buttons for the addition of items to different lists from other tabs. Whilst the functionality is there from the context menus I also want to have the functionality available as an alternative way of performing some of the common actions. I am redesigning the original layout to be more flexible and reliable. I originally had check boxes to select the list you want the item to be added to and a text box to obtain the quantity required. If the text box is empty then a window is popped up to obtain the quantity. This has been changed to drop the check boxes and uses the text box as an indicator whether the pop up window is needed and whether the quantity entered is an addition or a change.

As the kids are on half term from school then the development process has slowed down. I did make a start on the coding yesterday before being dragged off to build a Lego house for much of the afternoon. Time to go and do some shopping. Until next time.