Before I get into many tests for the best method, maybe someone has been there already?

I have a design with about 7 levels of parent/child forms with natural linkiing.
Top level can be called level1, it has a subform - level2.  Level 2 form has a subform - level 3.  And so on, until Level 6 with subform - level7.

The multi levels are to support a situation with multiple customers.  Each Customer has multiple Sales Orders.  Each order has multiple line items.  Each Item can be delivered to multiple sites.  Each site can have multiple delivery dates.  Each receipt is broken into lots.  And each lot can have multiple inspection measurements.  So, the resulting database structure looks something like this:
Customers/SOs/Line Items/DeliveryLocation/ReleaseDate/Lots/QC Samples.  The customer is pretty committed to this structure, so that will not change.

Each of the forms also has a relational subform in addition to the natural linked subform.  Both are there to provide the most flexibility for the import process.  The relational forms will be deleted after data has been imported.

The data in the 7 levels comes from many different sources, but will ultimately end up in ASCII file formats.  Most have just one level of data, and a key value will be inserted for the parent ID link.  The single Sesame application will be replacing about three other applications and multiple spreadsheets.

The question is the best way to import data into different levels.

I thought that I could create parent records in relational forms 6 for each parent of level 7, then import data into relational subform7.  Then I would export all records and subrecords from relational form 6, and import the data back into Natural link form 6.  Then could delete the relational subform 7 with its data.  But I am not sure that I would then be able to link these to level5 unless I import them into level 6 relational instead. I will also be importing level 6 data from ascii files as was done with level 7.

I could take a similar approach at each level, working up the tree of chlld/parents.

Do I do all the work only with relational forms until I do the final export of level 2 records?  Export from relational, subform2 and do the final import to natural linked subform2?

I am open to all suggestions about the best way to import the data into the Sesame natural linked structure.

I am glad I asked before putting in all the extra effort.

Wow, I can hardly wait until Monday morning!   

Thanks for the good news Erika.