Largish Project - Is it possible?

[pittuck]

Hi,

 

I have been hired to work on a rather complicated project and need some advice as to where to start.

 

A quick summary of the problem, the company I work for offers a PCB (Circuit Board) fabrication service paid for by the square inch. Designs are currently submitted via email to a member of staff who does a Design Rule Check to make sure the circuits adhere to certain design restraints (such as track widths and spacing issues).

 

But due to the amount of time needed to check each submitted PCB, and to email people back informing them their board have not passed DRC a system for checking the board online was created. This system has many draw backs, the main problem is that to do spacing checks the whole vector based file has to be checked graphically, this is hard to do in PHP without timeouts, excessive of use CPU and the 'not so reliable' GD library. So a new system will be brought into effect using a local PC at the company's office to do the DRC through a automated Marco system.

 

First, this OS Commerce shop will be dedicated to this one product;

 

Now, the web interface needs to be simple. The user has to be able to log in to OS Commerce and upload a zip file. This file will be analysed using PHP and then the user will be asked questions to identify the files in the zip file (Drill Data, Printed Text and so on). After this another bout of processing of the files will be done, and some more questions on the format of the files will be asked (the decimal system used, metric / imperial etc.) and finally the design will be submitted via email for processing.

 

Now comes the hard bit, the user is told that within the next 30 mins they will get an email containing the DRC information, and if in this email it says they failed they will be given a link to a page giving more information (plain HTML, nothing to do with OS Commerce).

 

But if they pass then we have the problem of how to handle the product. Ideally we would create a product with the number of square inches their design uses (integer) and then they can add the number they need to the order. But i am not sure this is possible in the fly. Of course, we can always add the 150 possible sizes as products and email them the corresponding URL.

 

Is this possible to build into OS Commerce? I would also want to strip most of the shop features such as category listings, whats new box etc. from the system to make sure nothing can go wrong.

 

Am I crazy? Or is it possible.

 

I have not used OS Commerce before, but am competent at PHP / MYSQL so I can handle it. But you guys know better than anyone if something is possible or if there are easier ways to do things.

 

Many thanks for your replies,

 

- Martyn Pittuck

[kgt]

I'm not sure I understand all of what you're going for, but it seems to me that you need more of a framework then an e-commerce application. I'm not quite clear at all on where OSC fits into your picture, except the purchasing part. As I understand, they will be offered a "part", and they can change the quantity, but there's not really shopping involved in the traditional sense.

[nana]

thinking out of the box since you are goingto do some coding

why don't you have a product created with the price based on the information that customer provides when he submit the design this can be done with some simple code in the send the file page and only be available to him.

 

then when you send him the approval email he can login to the shop choose the quantity for his product and pay for it

you might want to add it to the shopping cart also so he can just update quantity

[pittuck]

lol

 

"Great minds think alike"

 

lol

 

I am nearlt finished now, just working out somebugs / finishing touches.