Percentages

[mest79]

Hi!
How can I calculate the percentages of materials of a floor?

For example: for each m2 of flooring I have 20% tiles white, 30% tiles black and 50% parquet.

With "zone" I can calculate 1 percent with the parameter "occupancy" ... but the other 2?

Thanks!
Michele

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hello Michele,

I've moved your post to the Schedules forum where it belongs.

I wish I could tell you that what you want is easy or at least 'user friendly', but it is a little awkward using the older "List" scheme mechanism of ArchiCAD.

The interactive schedules are only capable of producing a single line of information for any one element in your model. So, you can get one line listing your floor area, but are not able to get multiple lines/results for the percentages of each tile.

The List Schemes, however, can calculate anything, but are not very "friendly".

We associate what is called a Property Object with your floor slab and tell the property object to compute a quantity of tiles according to your formula as a percentage of the total floor area. I'll show you the steps, but it will take several posts as I can only post one screenshot per post....

I'm working with the US library in feet/inches - vs your metric - but the differences should be obvious...

Step 1: create a new property object: File > Libraries and Objects > New Object

Change the subtype of the new object to Properties as shown here.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Step 2:

Click on Components, as shown, and then click the New button to create three lines as shown where I've picked 009 "Finishes" from the US default database - yours could be different, but it doesn't really matter...

I made up the codes 001, 002, 003 - could be anything

I described the tiles as you did and gave the percentages as fractions of 100 and the last column is key: I said I wanted the quantity proportional to the total surface area of the top of slab.

Save with a name in your embedded library. I called mine Tile Quantities here.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Step 3:

Open the Settings for your slab and go to the Listing and Labeling panel.

Check the box for "Individually" to indicate that we want to specifically link a Property Object to this slab.

Click the Choose... button and find your Tile Quantities (or whatever you named it) object, select it and OK out of the settings. The info in that object will now be used to compute the takeoff quantities for this slab.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Step 4: Generate your report

You can use the Basic Component List report to show your tile quantities now.

The attached screenshot shows the location of the report in the menus. It is also in the Navigator, where you can just double-click it.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Finally, this is what the report might look like for some arbitrary slab. The total areas add up to the area of the slab in my case as they should.

Do note an essential thing about this process: the relationship between reality or the intended design and the results that you see is 100% on you. ArchiCAD cannot verify that there is any meaning to the results.

For example, I attached this tile object to a composite slab that supposedly has carpet as the top/finish skin if you look at the name of the composite in the slab settings screenshot. Oops. Tile is calculated anyway because that's what the Property Object is doing.

The Property Object could have reported more tile than the total surface area if I did not make sure that my percentages added up to 1.00 That is, I could have accidentally said to report 50% white, 50% black and 50% parquet resulting in 50% more tiles than I can use. All error checking is in the user's lap. 😉

Karl

[mest79]

Wonderful!

How can I calculate the number of pieces?

For example: in 1,00 m2 I have 55 pieces. These pieces are divided: 20% of white tiles, 30% of black tiles and 50% of parquet.

Thanks Karl!

Michele

[Karl Ottenstein]

To get pieces, you would have to generate the components from a Property script (GDL code) in the property object rather than as a simple tabular setup as I showed.

The property script would compute the 20% of Surface A, then divide that by the area per tile+grout on 2 sides to get an approximation for the number of actual tiles. Because tiles would likely need to be cut and there would be waste, you would then multiple by some factor to estimate the number of tiles required, such as 110% of the result you just obtained.

See the GDL Reference Guide section on Non-Geometric Scripts for a description of the COMPONENT command and an example. (Page 235 in the US AC 19 version of the manual.)

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Karl!

[mest79]

Thank you very much Karl!!!
I have what I wanted...I'm just trying to improve its graphics.