[SalesForce] Does Record type prevent users from viewing records

On VisualForce pages you cannot use the 'standard' Page Layout Assignment settings, since that only works with standard page layouts. Also if you use a VisualForce page, there's no use adding or removing fields from the standard page layouts, since you define the page layout in your VisualForce page.

So what you need to do is add a 'rendered=' attribute to your inputfields, where it checks the recordType and based on that renders the inputfield or not.

The different picklist values should already work once you've chose a recordType for your record.

For more help you'd need to post your visualforce page here.

The record type drives the page layout. If you want to just have two record types, you cannot separate the layouts using the standard UI.

The alternative is a Visualforce page; this means you'd have to code four layouts, and use controller logic to determine how it should appear.

Personally, I'd go with the four record types. You could use a workflow rule to choose a record type in order to avoid the "label" of the record type giving too much information to the client.

Alternatively, you could hide the record type field entirely, and use a formula to display the record type to hide the distinction from your clients.