The Calculate issues are long-term annoyances, in part because we are not quantity surveyors. It's like having rendering capability but not understanding that there is no such thing as white. Ugly rendering = Useless Quantity Take-Off.
I remember my first Archicad University, where some poor Brit tried to explain how to use the function. This was when the Menu was REALLY BAD. No template help, even. Everybody went. Other (empty) session's instructors even came. The room was overfull. Standing room only during an afternoon following the pub lunch. All the guys were angry. If they were Americans, there would have been a lynching. But they were Brits so they just mumbled, fumed and shuffled their feet.The Hungarians, a delegation from headquarters, were lighting pitchforks and stabbing each other in shame. It was confusing. They were all called Zoltan.
I use the schedule for most ordinary things, but it is most useful when counting parking spaces and the like.
The killer is that to extract meaningful building quantities demands enormous quantity surveying experience and patience with meticulous specification description. I believe that while contractors CAN exploit these features (and do so in Graphisoft's Project Management applications) architects are best remaining with door and window schedules and using the calculate functions to merely compare relative material usage between alternative schemes. This is relatively easy to achieve once you have established a nominal volume/floor area value.
When architects need more, they wave their arms meaningfully (see avatar) and delegate.
Dwight Atkinson
