[Doug McLean]

I always have new people add this to their toolbars when I give them their initial tutorial.
I have to say it’s a bit confusing to me that this isn’t a default tool.
If you go looking for it, its on the Text toolbar. Just check the box to add

[Doug McLean]

a lot of people don’t know about it (and even more don’t realize its free)
It really is one of the best tools out there for repeated data washing.
Just mind your steps, because it can error out easily. Its best to have a nice consistent output of data so that your columns names are all the same all the time. That is one big key to using Power Query. The other is a consistent name of your markup summary, which a BatchConfig file will allow you to do. This will allow you to make your file path a bit more dynamic if you like

[Doug McLean]

Excellent question David.

I’ve always looked at it like this, if I can’t have the exact quantity in there, then I can at least have the money in there.

There are some things though in Millwork where we really have to be careful. There are a lot of limitations to our products because of various material size limitations. Sometimes a simple square foot takeoff is off because you can only get the material in 4 x 8 sheets. You might have taken off 40 odd square feet, but you need to order 64 sqft, and you need to charge for that accordingly. GC’s and designers also don’t like seeing 35% waste.
I take off panel sizes all the time that make material yield horrible, 25″ wide panels, 19″ wide panels, 100″ long panels… you’d be stunned at just how many designers out there think that there are no limitations on material sizes. With any luck you can get that 25″ panel AND that 19″ panel out of the same sheet, but only if it doesn’t need to be sequenced matched.
Another big one for us right now is meeting NAWWS standards. Architects and designers seem think that wood grows perfectly straight, without any pin knots or sapwood. That we can get 16/4 QS walnut in 15′ lengths. When we tell them we can’t get that, they honestly freak out. Mills generally don’t even produce 16/4 in a Quarter Sawn material.

When we’re doing a takeoff for these materials, we almost have to allow for 3 to 4 times the amount of material we’re going to used to meet the grade, or we have to allow for the money… which turns the board footage cost of 4/4 walnut from $11.50 bdft to $46 per bdft, because we need to buy 4 times the amount to meet their requirements. Don’t even get me started on FSC requirements… lol.

We do our level best to get it right, but this is estimating not accurating, we can only do so much.

[Doug McLean]

I personally do my RFI summaries from the RFI forms that I send out. Revu allows you to do merge data to forms which creates an Excel csv file really quickly. From there I can do whatever I need to do with it.

You could also do a markup export filtered appropriately to just your RFI markups

[Doug McLean]

Figured it out.
Select them in the Markups list, Rt. Click and set status.

Still learning this Status thing, quite useful

[Doug McLean]

It works, but it’s updating the Set when it’s in a cloud environment that is the challenge.

It’s really hard to explain what all it does, but let me say that it’s much easier to do it in Windows.

[Doug McLean]

I use it to show how to add a tool to a toolbar.

[Doug McLean]

Mine is set that way.
It only happens when I use an email template.

[Doug McLean]

This is why I use Forms.
Revu makes it very easy to export all the form data. Plus if they’re all in the same folder, you can use Merge Data and Revu will pull all the like data fields together in one simple report.

[Doug McLean]

Depends.
Our estimating software allows for us to set a waste percentage, so in most cases we’ll just do it that way.
But if its for something that I know I have a material limitation to, I do it in my markups. This is a great use for the Sketch to Scale markup tools and/or the alignment tools. I can lay out something evenly using a few lines and the ‘Distribute’ tools then place my markups accordingly. This way I can get an accurate sheet count as opposed to just square footage. Then when it imports into our estimating software the panel sizes are already accounted for.

If its something like moulding, we’ll round up to the nearest length of whatever we’re shipping.

[Doug McLean]

right there with you Isaac.
I have the MX Master Keys and the MX Master 3 mouse and absolutely love it.
The best is setting up my keyboard to the phone 🙂

[Doug McLean]

Same formulas exist in Excel David.

[Doug McLean]

yeah, that’s doable. Most doors are 21 sqft, so that makes it pretty easy

It would all depend on what you want though, how close of count do you need?
If I’m taking off something like sequenced wall paneling around a window, I need the veneer that would have gone where the window is. Doesn’t matter that the customer isn’t getting it, they’re still paying for it. It may not show up the finished quantity of wall paneling, but we’d better account for it during ordering and layups.
Same thing with a door skin, only I need to keep that and mark it as such so that it stays for the door and all blends in with the surrounding wall paneling.

What I tell people though is to just leave it in, but then not to add anything for waste.

[Doug McLean]

well I can definitely get an image report and then twist the data to whatever is needed.
Pulling data from that image in itself will be up to Microsoft and what all they allow to be read in the metadata

[Doug McLean]

Not really sure that’s going to be possible with image data.

Although, Excel is releasing a new feature soon where you can import image data into a cell.