|
|
AutoCAD Civil 3D and Pay Items
4 Nov, 2010 By: Phillip ZimmermanCAD Clinic Civil 3D Tutorial: Set up your drawings to produce reports with item counts, areas, or volumes that are updated if the drawings change.
Editor's Note: This tutorial courtesy of Imaginit.
All of the elements that implement AutoCAD Civil 3D require setup time. Although this time is usually thought of as costly, if used wisely, the resulting setup changes a job's workflow and expands the resulting work's value.
For example, a plotted sheet is passed to an estimating group, and it is marked up to produce an item count and estimation. In this workflow, if the design changes, new sheets need to be plotted and the estimating team must determine the differences and create new counts. With this process, it's possible to miss subtle changes, which are easily overlooked.
By using Civil 3D pay items, drawings can produce reports with item counts, areas, or volumes, which are used in a spreadsheet to create an estimate. The estimation spreadsheet contains a costing formula column that produces an estimate from Civil 3D's pay item reports. Should a drawing change, a new pay item report file is generated containing the changes, and when imported into the estimation spreadsheet, it produces a new estimate. While pay item reports are useful, like anything else, they are only as good as the user assigning the pay item entries to objects in a drawing.
To create a quantity take off (QTO) report, you must first create a pay item master list. The master list is an ASCII file with a CSV extension. To organize and better manage this potentially lengthy list, a category file is added to create divisions, groups, and sections, or any user-defined category system.
The last element of the pay item master list is a formula file. This file does not calculate an estimate, but provides a means to convert values for an estimate. For example, if using the pave link to calculate an asphalt value, the pay item report uses the link to calculate an area in square yards. If asphalt is estimated by the ton, a formula needs to calculate the number of tons from the material's area and thickness.
To reduce assignment errors, Civil 3D assigns pay item values automatically for roadways through the code set styles and the pipe networks' pipe parts lists. The remaining pay items are manually assigned to individual (any AutoCAD or Civil 3D) or area (closed polygons) entities. The manual assignment tools are found at the top center of the pay item's vista. The tools to create a quantity report are located in the same vista area.
The pay item's vista includes tools for manual assignment and creating quantity reports.
After creating and assigning pay item values to AutoCAD and Civil 3D objects, the final step is creating a pay item report. This report contains counts, areas, and calculated values.
The estimating team will use this file to create a job estimate. Autodesk maintains that it is not in the estimation business, and that the company only provides tools that allow you to gather data used in the estimation process.
1 2 3
|
|
AutoCAD Tips!
Autodesk Technical Evangelist Lynn Allen guides you through a different AutoCAD feature in every edition of her popular "Circles and Lines" tutorial series. For even more AutoCAD how-to, check out Lynn's quick tips in the Cadalyst Video Gallery. Subscribe to Cadalyst's Tips & Tricks Tuesdays free e-newsletter and we'll notify you every time a new video tip is available. All exclusively from Cadalyst! |
|
