Best Of

Katie,

I use spaces when doing estimates for Electrical. For example, I will create a space for an entire parkade level, as well as spaces for individual rooms. When I complete the takeoff, I export to a CSV file and add it to a database that will track $/sf for all these rooms. This gives me the ability to quickly generate budget numbers if needed as well as a good base point for cross checking estimates.

Because I cannot cutout the individual spaces, i have to manipulate the exported names on the CVS file before I can add them to our database.

My team frequently uses a large amount of tools for a multitude of structural steel shapes. We have attempted to keep the shapes to a small amount but there are so many common shapes not even all of them being in our tool chest.

The new search tool has been very helpful in quickly finding the right tool. However, this feature I am requesting would be even more convenient. It would be great to have a section, similar to the "Recent Tools" tab, that keeps a list of markups on the set of drawings. This way, if we reuse one steel shape multiple times throughout the drawings, it will be more readily available.

I came to this idea after I tried achieving the same goal with the current "Recent Tools" grouping, but it seems a little hard to use. You can only see the symbol and not the title of the tool, making it difficult to know what I am grabbing without hovering over it or clicking on it, which becomes frustrating over an entire job.

Ideally any markups on the drawings would appear (in their properties mode) automatically in this section (whether that be a standalone section or a new mode/option under the Recent Tools section). Then you could actually copy a markup into your toolchest if you want directly from this section, which would be convenient in general and be a little more intuitive than going into properties to add a markup to the toolchest. I'm just throwing a few things out there as ideas of course it could be done may ways. I also see this being useful when passing drawings to coworkers as my markups would not currently appear in their recents.

Note the screenshots below show the lack of Detail/Symbol mode on the Recent Tools which gets convoluted quickly with so many similar shapes and colors.

Pretty sure I was just overthinking what you're talking about. I was hoping to leverage the Alignment option to adjust one and have the others simply align to match. No such luck to solve what you're talking about. Having the option to select multiple control points and move them in unison would be great.

Are the lines polylines? Or just lines? Is the issue "stretching" the end point of multiple or the ability to simply select the multiple objects? Just looking for a little clarity to be able to maybe assist.

Thanks @dgnadt, I agree this would be a useful addition to our text editing capabilities! Your feedback makes it easier to prioritize features like this.

Hi Seth.

Thanks for sharing this.

How many tools do you typically use for a takeoff? Do you tend to use one group of tools for one type of takeoff and another set for a different type of takeoff?