Tips & Tricks
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Finding your custom tools quickly
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Finding your custom tools quickly
We have assembled an extensive custom tool chest. To make finding the tools easier they are grouped into tool sets by type of work – water, sewer, paving, etc. The list is still pretty long though. I discovered a shortcut to make finding tools easier if I need to add additional takeoff into a file. Simply find an existing takeoff in your drawing and modify it – move a control point for example, and then undo the change with a quick “ctrl-z”. When you do this the tool appears in your “Recent Tools” set and you can start a new markup without having to page through all of your tool sets.
Added bonus tip – did you know that dynamic fill has an option for choosing from a “recent tools” set also? The tip above can be used with dynamic fill!
Anyone have other ways that you use “Recent Tools” to speed up your work?
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2 Replies
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Points: 2,052Rank: UC2 Brainery Yellow Belt III
I see what you did there…
Do you “bounce” around between different types of work quite frequently? Meaning, let’s say you’re marking up your Sewer stuff, do you mostly focus on those? Or while you’re doing Sewer you also have extensive markups for Water and Paving?
You could potentially create different profiles where your “main type of work” has tool-set with shortcuts, and the other tools sets will still be available.
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Points: 16,968Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt I
That’s a good question Roye. A lot depends upon the size of the project. One takeoff recently had 299 separate housing units over a 40 acre site. I had hours of time on that one for each type of utility to ensure I didn’t miss anything. The one I have on my desktop now has 1 sanitary lateral, 1 section of watermain and a few storm sewer runs so I would be switching profiles multiple times. I guess I could have specific task profiles and a general profile that has everything. I’ll have to think about that one.
Typically I try to take the job off in the order that our crews build them – start with sediment & erosion controls then move into clearing, earthwork, sanitary sewer, storm sewer, water, curb/stone/pave/sidewalk and then miscellaneous. I have my custom tool sets organized in that order. This works well for standard markups, but when you get to dynamic fill you have to scroll through all of your custom area tools to find the one you need as they don’t “roll up” and worse yet there isn’t a slider bar and the scroll wheel doesn’t work either – hence when I found the way to get my desired tool into the “recent tools” section at the top I jumped on it.
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