Framing take-offs

[Anonymous]

Hi, The company I have started working for is looking for a more efficient way to do framing take-offs. At my previous employer, we were using software called Vertex BD which was reasonably good in this aspect. I have found that ArchiCAD can get most of the information we need to spit out the numbers that our lumber supplier would use to do a manual take off, such as; windows, doors, linear footage & wall height but the big one I can't find is a corner count or any other count of wall connections to get number for the extra studs needed in those locations.

Short of placing a dedicated object for those does anyone have any ideas?

[poco2013]

I can't help you -- but I can add my sympathy and comment on the dismal state of wood wall framing in Archicad.

Using the wall accessory tool you can lay out wall framing and then get a cut count using the standard component list schedule. You must use that schedule because wall framing in Archicad is a object and the wall studs are reported as components. This also makes it impossible to edit the wall object outside of some standard settings.

Unfortunately , The wall accessory tool in 22 is so buggy as to be unusable now - Previous versions worked -- somewhat. A effort was made to fix it in 22 and they just made it worse!!

There are some workaround -- mostly unacceptable:
You could manually draw the wall framing using beams , then copy,paste,edit. Then the interactive schedules will report accurately.

Could use a expression to roughly calculate the number of studs based on length as you are doing now but it would be done automatically. A option property could add the number of corner studs based on a selection type. This would not allow for windows, headers and doors though - as is your case.

Use a web based wall framing calculator (blocklayer.com) to calculate the same. Same problem as above

Buy the $6000 and $800+ yearly add-on tool from ArchiFrame.

The real only solution is for Archicad to fix this embarrassment. Been reported numerous times!!!

[Anonymous]

I don't even want ArchiCAD to do the estimates for me, updating price changes would be an absolute nightmare. The ability to spit out an Excel document with the relevant key measures would be more than enough. Then I can import that into my costing spreadsheet and be done with it. As it stands right now, I can get nearly all the information I want but getting the output format I want is a bit of a pain.

[DGSketcher]

If you have time to spare look at the v22 Curtain Wall tool. I have adopted it for my framing drawings. My brief attempt at scheduling suggests it is possible, but care needs to be taken with editing the framing id's depending on what you want to extract. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can use images in the schedule e.g. front view, so the panels have to be visually extracted using 3D documents if you want to dimension each panel front view.

For modelling, once you get up the steep learning curve, the results are better than expected and probably more reliable than the add-on goodie.

[Anonymous]

I am more or less okay with letting my framers figure out the details on how to build most walls. What I want to be able to do is order my material without a lot of extra work. Right now I am paying my lumber supplier to do a take-off for me. I have talked to them in the past an I know for the most part all they are doing is taking the linear footage of a wall type dividing it by two rounding up and adding one to get a stud count for that wall. Then for openings of a certain size, they add another stud or 2, and for 90-degree or 45-degree corners, they add 2 or 4 more, and for t-intersection the add 2. Header information is based on the windows.

90% of this information is readily available, and I should be able to automate the process very quickly in Excel. It is that last 10% of information that I need to somehow get or find a workaround for.

[Ben Cohen]

Hi Jason

We have been using a separate object for wall corners for years. (Manually placed)... Unfortunately there is no way to calculate the wall connections.
But... with expressions, you could possibly compare the wall outside length with the wall inside length... the difference can be used to roughly determine the cornering. Not perfect but it may help

Maybe add a wish to the wishlist... I for one would really like to see the wall end connection angles available in expressions.

[Erwin Edel]

Maybe I am thinking to lightly about this, but isn't it just amount of walls to get amount of corner connections?

You could make a schedule for specific wall composite and just have that count how many you have.

[Anonymous]

Erwin, that might be an excellent workaround for the problem when it comes to the exterior walls. It won't address the different count between 45 and 90-degree junctions but could get close enough that the handful of studs that are missed could be covered in a slight adjustment to the waste allowance.

Interior walls and T-junctions would still need to be accounted for somehow. Maybe that is just a manual count or an object placed on the drawings for now but it would be nice to have ArchiCAD do that automatically like other programs are capable of doing.

[Anonymous]

Found a partial workaround that should work in our case. We get a count of exterior cladding trim that should work in nearly every case, still leaves "T" connections as a number that is missing but we are getting closer.

[Rick Thompson]

The old rule of thumb for stud count is 1 stud per lineal foot of wall comes out about right for ordering/estimating for 16" oc framing. I set up a property object that counts studs that way, (plus plate material... DW, paint, base.. etc). With studs you obviously can't expect to order the exact number, and in the field there is material you can't use, so trying to hard to pin it down isn't particle, IMHO.