Hi,

My next project is to try and build an Ishikawa (also known as a fishbone or
cause and effect) model in Excel. There's plenty of good packages available
to buy, but I would like to build my own a) because it's a challenge and b)
they don't seem to be XL plug-ins.

The end model should look something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram

I have managed to fnd one XL through Google, but it is very limited in its
capabilities and depends on manual data entry.

What I would like to build is a tool that will interrogate my source data
(another XL spreadhsheet being used as a database) and build the model
automatically.

I have no way of knowing how many records are in the source data, though I
do know how the data is structured.

I'm happy enough putting something together that ill pull in the needed data
and lay it out in any way I want to, but what I can't figure out is how to
generate the output, specifically the relationships between the various
levels of "bones".

Any ideas would be appreciated.

TIA

Dave