Need a way to display specific groups of search fields

Hi, all -

I serve a marketplace for a niche set of consumers and thus have 4 different profile types on my site. Each one has its own set of searchable custom fields. Thus, the "Advanced Search" dropdown list contains some 40 fields for the user to choose between - no user will ever understand this!!

I understand that you don't have the option to specialize search fields by profile type, but I would like to know if one of these two options is a possible work around:

a) Is there a custom profile field for "profile type"? This would at least help us to create "Global filters" for our members that allow them to browse particular groups of members within a particular profile type.

b) Is it possible to create a number of different search panel templates, and then to specify the fields that appear on each? These panels would be similar to your "Dating Search" module in that they would display all of the selected fields at once (rather than making the user add the search criteria one at a time like the Advanced Search panel does).

For instance, I would create 1 template for profile type A, displaying fields 1-8; another for profile type B displaying fields 1-4 + 9-16, etc. Then I would create a search menu item for each template.

Would this work? If so, what would the syntax be to draw each field?

Thank you!
Cheryl
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