Group/Sorting Shared Variables?

[vangyer]

I might be making this too complicated but basically I need to sort a report by dimensions each dimension has an element.

Overall
Opening
Length

Sometimes an object can have all 3 or just one or 2 of the options.
if there are 3 objects the first one has all 3 elements and the other two only has one of the element, I'd like to extract Length as the dimension to sort by in the first object.

I was able to pass the value using shared variables but unfort. you can't sort by a shared variable, any help would be appreciated?

 

[Charliy]

Unclear on the data structure. Is it one record with three fields, or would you have three records if you have all three elements?

 

[vangyer]

one record with 3 fields

 

[Charliy]

create a formula something like this

if isnull({table.length)) and isnull({table.opening}) and isnull({table.overall})
then 0
else
If not(isnull({table.length}))
then {table.length}
else
if not(isnull({table.secondchoice}))
then {table.secondchoice}
else {table.thirdchoice}

 

[vangyer]

sorry should have clarified, all the values are in a single field
"table.dimension" but is designated through a separate field "table.dimensionelement"

I tried a if/then on element but need it to loop all the way through and it was just picking the first dimension.

basically i need it to read through all the dimension elements, assign rank and then sort by the value of the no. 1 ranked element


Object ID 1:
Length: 24
Overall: 38x43x24
Opening: 12

Object ID 2:
Length 24

Object ID 3:
Opening: 8
Overall: 3

need the report to sort
Object ID 3
Object ID 1
Object ID 2

Use Length dim to sort first, if no length then use Opening, if no opening then use dimension from Overall but then sort by the actual dimension value not element.

 

[vangyer]

sorry since first 2 objects have the same dimension for length, i wouldn't need a specific order for those two.