I love the roof tool, but for me a few things are missing for taking quantities. I guess this subject relates more to builders and estimators, I would love to be able to add some more detail to my roofing bill of quantities when drawing roofs with eaves and soffits.
I would really like to be able to get eaves framing quantities e.g. outriggers, lengths of batten parallel to the wall.
Quad molding for eaves. This is also another essential quantity needed
Eve’s and soffits do not show sheet quantities, would be great if we could enter the generic sheet sizing and when clicking on quantities to be shown how many sheets would be needed for eaves.
could anybody guide me to how I might be able to draw or customise these components and add them to my bill of quantities when drawing a roof?
If they could be added to the tool, what would be the best way to draw these separately and add to the bill of quantities.
While I’m on the topic of customising I would also like to be able to draw and quantify external moldings e.g. external corner molds weatherboards.
To add the structural members to the roof I would recommend to use the options in the Alternatives section of the Rafter Tool (see image below for details). To draw the members, click on the ‘Draw’ button on the option you want then left-click in the model start drawing the member then left-click again to finish drawing it. All options use the ‘Rafter Material’ for the size of the member.
Thank you for your suggestion regarding the eave’s and soffit’s, I will take it back to the development team for further discussion. At the moment the default eave materials will estimate the length that they are covering so you can work out how many sheets per side.
For the other items you are wanting to estimate (external moldings, quad moldings, etc.) I would recommend to draw them using SketchUp tools then use the PlusSpec BIM Tool to add the estimating information to the object(s).
Would you be able to please let me know if this works for you?
Although your recommendations does get the job done it takes away from the speed and fluidness of Plusspec. By the time I draw the objects, place them in the correct position, assign them to layers, I could have calculated the quantity in 5x speed with a calculator.
I guess I can hope one day it will be an addition to the roof tool.
As far as adding beading or quad. I use the fascia measure. For eaves I created my own material with lines on it i basically drew a 2400x2400 rectangle the screen shot it and added it as my material and called it 2400x600. Yet the fastest way is to simply use the fascia measure and divide by the sheet length you require to suit the overhang you have specified. The best tip I can give is to export the BIM BOQ to Excel or google sheets and then create a customer sheet where you do these calculations. I basically export to Excel, create a sheet called eaves and then I reference sheet 2 cell A1 to Fascia sheet b4. If you spend and hour or so setting up your excel sheet you will always have the individual items that you require in the format that makes sense to you.
I am glad that PlusSPec does not have all of this extra stuff in it as it will slow it down. I can get an estimate done using my method in less than 20 minutes on a single story & 30 minutes on a 2 storey.
Also for eave sprockets I use the joist tool. I select the eave faces and then use 70x35 with perimeter beam, yet I do get a few extra lengths but I fund that the carpenters use these for blocking, trimming and bath framing. I’d rather have 3 lengths over than 3 lengths short, most of the time I bang on the amount when doing this. I never have more than 2 lengths of lumber left over. I really do not care about the direction or if the sprocket lines up with the truss because I am estimating not designing.
