Tips & Tricks
Are you looking for some of the best-known Tips & Tricks or have some to share. This is the place to... View more
Organizer:
- Organized by
-
-
Best “unintended” custom tool feature?
-
Best “unintended” custom tool feature?
The estimating software that we use, B2W (formerly known as “Bid 2 Win”), has a very specific Excel column order. When I created my custom tools I created custom columns for each of the 9 required import columns so they would all be present, in the correct order in my CSV export file, simple enough. Where it gets interesting is that one of the columns is “ignored” by the software, but it still needs to be there when you upload the data to the software.
Knowing what I know now (thank you @Doug McLean !) I could simply add the majority of the columns during my data washing using Power Query since most of them are left blank at the takeoff stage. What I’ve found since then though is the mysterious “N/A” column can be very useful as a sorting/grouping tool. Most recently I’ve used it to split items between multiple phases of the project by simply establishing “Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, etc.” values in the “N/A” column.
Basically I built in an additional sorting option completely by accident. 🙃
Have you found any “unintended” features like this in any of your tools?
-
1 Reply
-
Points: 26,758Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt
This is great @David Cutler. I’ve built tools and custom columns for customers that match the estimating software for import. Sometimes the data in those columns is empty in Bluebeam, like you said. I simply hide those columns in Bluebeam to reduce clutter. They can still export, but we don’t need to see them. Unless, of course, you’re adding value by using them differently, like you are.
Great post, thanks for sharing!
Log in to reply.