Cloning Manufacturer Box

I plan on using the manufacturer field/sidebox to categorize products and would like a second manufacture field/sidebox for a second categorization.

They do not need to interact - my desire is to have them entirely separate.

Has anyone done this? Any ideas? Any advice?

Thanks!

If you mean the:
/includes/modules/sideboxes/manufacturers.php
/includes/templates/template_default/sideboxes/tpl_manufacturers_select.php

then you can copy those to new files:
/includes/modules/sideboxes/manufacturerssomething.php
/includes/templates/template_default/sideboxes/tpl_manufacturerssomething_selected.php

and do a global replace, cAsESenSaTive, of:
manufacturers

and change to:
manufacturerssomething

WARNING: do not change any of the fieldnames or references to the fieldnames such as:
m.manufacturers_id
$manufacturer_sidebox->fields['manufacturers_id']
$_GET['manufacturers_id']

WARNING: be sure to change the references from:
tpl_manufacturers_selected.php

to read:
tpl_manufacturerssomething_selected.php

Thanks for the reply. Got waylaid on other things.

I don't think I explained clearly and completely:

I need a second 'manufacturer' field in the product description as well as a second, corresponding dropdown sidebox.

These two fields will be renamed to 'palettes' and 'styles' - by using these drop downs a customer could select certain colors or design styles.

This can get complicated ...

If you cloned the field and table for manufacturers you might be able to setup this relationship for this new field ...

More or less, following the word:
manufacturer

in the code with the Developers Tool Kit could help you find everywhere that field is used and the functions needed so that you could build your own set of functions, search, sidebox, admin add/edit etc.