How to use items and variables

Hi there! 👋 Great question about using items and variables - this is such a powerful feature once you get the hang of it!

For your slab example with concrete and gravel calculations, you'd typically:

• Create an area takeoff for your slab
• Set up variables for Thickness in Custom Properties
• 

• Add Items for Concrete and Gravel and use the Variable and set up Formulas for each items
• Use formulas to calculate cubic yards from your area × thickness
• Takeoff the Area for Slab and then Drag the 2 Items on to the Slab area on the plan and depending on the Thicknesses entered in the variable the result will be based on the individual thickness

We don't have a specific video tutorial as yet, but this would be super helpful! 📹

I'm forwarding your request for a tutorial video to our support team.

Regarding admin vs regular user permissions - that's another great question! There are some permission-related features in development:

• Permission Based Folders Within a Project (Planned) - Link

Are there any specific permissions you are looking to restrict to the Owner/ Administrator User? Please share your thoughts and intended workflow.

Would love to see more community members share their workflows too! Have you tried experimenting with the variables feature yet, or are you looking for that tutorial first? 🤔

There are further Enhancments coming for Items, Templates and Variables which will further improve and enhance current workflows.

Thanks for the feedback - this helps us prioritize what educational content to create! 🙏

I'm getting close, who can help me here? Here is a 4min viedo of me trying to figure this out! I'm pretty clueless here, but see the potential!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q57EStghcmU

Hi Kyle! We have another update to simplify items coming out in a couple days. After that, I'll personally build a video showing how it all works. Long term we will also have a formula tester as you mentioned. It will be a lot more magical and intuitive after the next few updates.

In the meantime, this may help:

When you define your Area with Depth it auto calculates the volume which can be directly used in the formula.

By default the [Volume] here is in Cubic Feet (regardless of what you choose on the takeoff for units) so divide by 27 for cubic yards. This is intentional so that if someone changes the units on the takeoff, it doesn't mess up calculations for the items/parts.

The purpose of the "Usage" as its own field is to allow multiple locations for the same material.

Yards of Concrete | Slab

Yards of Concrete | Stem Wall

Yards of Concrete | Footing

2x4x8 | Stud

2x4x8 | Top Plate

2x4x8 | Bottom Plate

This allows more ways to slice and dice the data in reports, but also a way to group and get all "Yards of Concrete" or "2x4x8".

This is awesome, I got it working and its already intuitive enough. Keep on rocking it. Going to take some brain damage and will need some work on the Ediphi end, but I see this working well with the assemblies in Ediphi. Example below.

Woohoo! Good stuff Kyle 🙂 I can't wait to get a full real-time sync into Ediphi. Just a matter of time.

For us older OST users a common practice was to also include the rebar grid so we could obtain the total LF. Of course a user could build a custom property but perhaps ZZT makes this already available? Tile, ACT, Rebar, Concrete Sawcuts, etc would all benefit from having this already in the takeoff item. Of course, I may be missing something. I am jumping back in after being out of this for 3 months :)