FrameMaker graphic counter question

[poshedly at bellsouth.net]

(FM 8.0 on an HP Pavilion with Windows Vista)

And yet another question for Framers. My TOC problem "seems" to be taken care of, and the transparent background for graphics question is on the back burner because now there's another "hot" issue: page appearance.

The company (a heavy equipment manufacturer from Asia) is just getting  a foothold here in the U.S. and is very finicky about how the manuals should look, as they should be.

A typical page layout in an operator manual has text at the left side of the page column and corresponding line art (or photo) image to its  right in an anchored frame that is right- aligned. Easy enough. You've all seen and worked with this layout I'm sure.

But now, one of the execs here saw how in a competitor's manual, not only is there a small ID number just inside the lower right corner of each graphic (which we also do), but also another number which specifies the section and numerical sequence of each graphic; this number is outside the graphic frame and at the lower left.

I believe that it's useless because to most everybody else on the planet, the graphic obviously applies to the numerical step to its direct left. If an equipment operator is on the phone with someone, I can guarantee that he (or she) will say, "Step 3 on page 3-56 says to do this and even shows how it should look."

No one is going to say, "Step 3 says to do this, and graphic 3-76 shows it."

In any event, I aim to please so I'm spending lots of time trying to see how to best come up with a way to do this with as little impact as possible on timing.

Each graphic is 2.75 in. wide (height varies).

So far, I've completed a sample chapter with a new paragraph tag called "Section Graphic Counter" and set it at 10-pt Arial, right-aligned at 2.6 inches from the right side of the page. It uses the section number and will count upwards automatrically. Again, so far so good.

But problems occur when there is so much vertical text to the left of the graphic that I can't enter a hard return and tag that line as "Section Graphic Counter". 

And sometimes, the height of the graphic is such that even if there is space for a hard return, the resulting Section Graphic Counter Number is either too far below the graphic frame box or right against its side.

So the question becomes is there a rather simple way to generate this number and position it consistently outside the lower left bottom corner of each anchored graphic frame and not have to worry about explanatory text at the left side of the page interfering?

-- Kenpo in Atlanta