Bill of Quantities

[Anonymous]

The Bill of Quantities shows Element ID, Name, Thickness and volume. Can anyone tell me what good is the column showing the Volume other than for insulation?

[Anonymous]

what good is the volume of the given items on a list. Where is the lengths of walls, the height of the walls the surface area of the walls, etc. The only good the volume is is for the concrete grave and other poured in place items for the job. The volume of a stud is useless.

[Karl Ottenstein]

ROBERT wrote:
what good is the volume of the given items on a list. Where is the lengths of walls, the height of the walls the surface area of the walls, etc. The only good the volume is is for the concrete grave and other poured in place items for the job. The volume of a stud is useless.

What's your point? If you want the length of a stud (reasonable) and not the volume (silly, as you say) - why would you schedule the volume? Just schedule the length.

[Anonymous]

I'm not interested about stud lengths. that's not the point. The point is What value is the volume of a wall? Does that give you anything more than insulation or just air space? What good does the volume of plywood do?

[Karl Ottenstein]

ROBERT wrote:
I'm not interested about stud lengths. that's not the point. The point is What value is the volume of a wall? Does that give you anything more than insulation or just air space? What good does the volume of plywood do?

I'll ask again... why do you even care? If you don't want it, don't schedule it.

The volume of wood (you did ask about studs) can give the relative mass... multiplying by a known weight factor, it can give the approximate weight of the load of lumber to be put on a truck.

The volume of a wall for concrete does give the amount to order, as you mention. For other wall assemblies, it's up to you what value it is. Maybe you want to know what portion of the gross building volume is heatable/coolable (conditionalble) air vs wall and other mass.

I suppose a firm that makes pre-fab walls (e.g., out of SIPS, or for modular housing) would want the volume for warehouse storage and for shipping.

I've never needed any of those things.

If you want the volume of insulation, then use a Component schedule to schedule the volume of just the skin representing the insulation space.

ArchiCAD gives the volume of every element... its up to you whether it has meaning for you and you want to include it in your schedule.

[Karl Ottenstein]

ROBERT wrote:
The Bill of Quantities shows Element ID, Name, Thickness and volume. Can anyone tell me what good is the column showing the Volume other than for insulation?

Ah! I just merged your other posts into this, your first post/thread. Your other posts should have been here - and without this first post, none of us had any idea you were talking about the Bill of Quantities list rather than general schedules, which is the topic of the other thread that you posted in.

The Bill of Quantities, as all lists, is pretty useless and is only there as a sample. The default lists and everything about list schemes is unchanged since ArchiCAD 6.5 (other than a few minor additions). There is almost no documentation, and the only good resource for using list schemes is the book ArchiCAD - From CAD to quantity survey:

http://www.fc-cadlink.com/fccl-boutique/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&prod...

A tiny percentage of users utilize the List Schemes (formerly known as the Calculation Menu). Most use the Element and Component (Interactive) Schedules.

As you search the forum, you'll see that the only US user who regularly posts about using the list schemes rather than the interactive schedules is Rick Thompson, who generates a list of materials for his stock plans. You'll find lots of discussion if you search via the Wiki search box, for example this thread:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=3590