[Don Walke]

Bob, I use an area measurement in painting take-offs to quantify the ceiling area, the wall area (using “length” function of an area markup multiplied by the “depth”), the lf of baseboard and lf of crown. You have to get a little creative with formulas and additional columns to isolate your totals of specific items. though. I wish that Revu had an “if” function, but there are work-arounds. It seems that a polyline is a polyline no matter what you call it in a toolbox be it a lenth of pipe or lf of crown moulding. My workaround if I want to total a particular line item is to create a choice column with Yes = 1 and no = 0. The column that will total a particular tool will be a formula column that multiplies the length by the result of the choice column (1or 0) so that only tools with a pre-selected “Y” will populate the column. This allows me to sort a plan by space and get totals for each selected tool for each space (in my case room numbers)

[Don Walke]

Join the club. I may be off base, but my understanding is that “save to profile” in this instance saves the columns to that particular PDF. Try going to profile/save profile, them profile/manage profiles and export the profile o a directory for safe keeping. I’ve had profiles get corrupted and had to delete them and import a copy.

[Don Walke]

As far as sorting goes, I use a prefix number on my tool subject names so that when i sort by subject, the markups will be in a specific order and not alphabetical.

[Don Walke]

This is an interesting topic. The major point I see is that there is a difference between estimating and project buy-out. While in the estimating function, You are most likely bidding against other bidders and need to be careful not to bloat the pricing and lose out on the bid. It needs to be quick and efficient, adjusted for market conditions, completed and forgotten about so you can concentrate on the next bid. There is art to it.

Once the bid is awarded, the buy-out guys can worry about efficient material purchases, that’s their job. They can buy over multiple jobs, buy in bulk, ect.

Just my two cents.

[Don Walke]

I run into the same issue where there are a couple of hundred layers on the original PDF. I assume it is from the architect or engineer starting a project with a template which contains all of the layers, but they usually use only a fraction of the layers to draw (unused layers are greyed out in the list of layers). Maybe turn off the unwanted layers prior to printing to PDF.

[Don Walke]

I have a similar problem, but not with layers. Seems that every two or three times I open the program, one or two of the tools gets corrupted. It’s always the first tool in a toolbox, and the tool acquires attributes of some other tool in another toolbox (subject, layer, color, ect). I just replace the profile with a saved copy.

[Don Walke]

I’ve actually narrowed it down to something very similar to what you have set up. What I have for the actual markup to represent and gather all of the info on each door is a circle with a shaded infill placed over the door mark. That way I can still read the mark (Door 012, 013, ect.) I place all the markups over the door marks, then scroll through the markup list with the door schedule and specifications panel opened on a third monitor and input info in custom columns on the specifications panel (Door #, Door Size, Door Type, Door Swing, Hardware and on and on). I thoroughly believe consistent workflow is the key to accurate take-offs.

[Don Walke]

Well, just shut down for the second time and it’s fixed.

[Don Walke]

I always keep an unaltered original just in case. Some architects eave up to several hundred layers in their drawings and come to think about it, maybe nest all the originals under a new collapsed “Architect” layer and keep my layers separate. 🤔

[Don Walke]

Also, If I can isolate the layer that has a hatch showing type of wall for example, I delete the cont of that layer so that if I am trying to select a corner of a room I don’t accidentally select an intersection between a wall line and a hatch line.

[Don Walke]

I generally delete the architects layers prior to doing my take-off, as I use layers to organize and better view my work. You should get a dialog box confirming the deletion with the option of saving or removing the content of the layer.

[Don Walke]

Thanks, will give it a go.

[Don Walke]

That sounds great. Got any clues on how to set up a macro? Last time I did anything like that was using Lotus 123.

[Don Walke]

Good idea, just odd that a program with such valuable and unique functionality would have glitches like this.

[Don Walke]

<div>Thanks for the reply. Although saving a layer to a tool in your toolbox, when using it on a new drawing it will create the layer in the new document, but will not bring along any layer hierarchy (parent/child relationships). I did browse through the blog posts that you linked to, and found an answer. Andrew Veggian suggested creating a blank document with the layer hierarchy intact to use as a template, then importing the new drawing . With the layer structure now set up, delete the template page and you a good to go.
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Adding a suggestion from another discussion, my template drawing is set up s a 120″ x 100″ page and I can copy and paste the relevant parts of drawing on the template. All of my take-off is now on one page. (scaled viewports are a must)

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