Just thinking through one other option, it would be difficult and pretty annoying to implement - but if you wanted to have different layouts and also have different 'edit' forms based on different criteria - you could try something where the Default form is just one big rich-text formula rendering of the form. Basically just take all your info and build out the form to display in one massive rich text. Make that the only field on the form so regardless of how your user lands on that form it's always this same non-editable field.
In your rich-text field - you could insert hyperlinks that do pop up's of different forms that correspond to different sections. So if you had Section 1A for this type of form entry - user sees the data you want to show and if they want to edit, click a hyperlink and it pops out a different form specific to Section 1A. Do the same for Section 1B etc. It makes the 'edit' experience more like a series of modals/pop ups which is not a common QB interface, and make's it complex to administer but would allow you to insert all sorts of complexity into how users view and edit any type of record.
