Q & A
Gillian Wolpert Segment Lengths within a Linear Takeoff
Hey Community!
I'm looking for a couple features/workarounds to make zz a better collaborative tool for other departments and wondering if anyone knows how to do these things/has a template formula that works:
1) If I'm taking off a page with multiple different breakout areas on it, is there a way to auto populate "location" or another custom field based on where it's dropped on the drawing? For instance, if I were to map out with the area takeoff all of the different breakout areas on a page, is there any way for a fixture to recognize that it has been dropped within one of those areas?
2) I typically draw linear items with the linear takeoff and not the segment takeoff tool. But is there a way to get data on the segment lengths if I draw a single linear with multiple segments?
Thanks!
Hey @Gillian
I haven't been using zz for a long time but I'm curious about your questions.
- I'm not sure what the term "breakout" refers to in this question, can you provide more context?
- As I think I'm understanding if there were a plan sheet that had multiple areas that had identifiers (rooms/zones/etc) and those identifiers have a QTO associated:
- Living Room - 250 sf (Area Takeoff)
- Mechanical Room - 30 sf (Area Takeoff)
- etc
- I'm not sure if the question is can AI or "Click-To-Drag" automatically grab these areas and break them out as an area/folder/label/etc?
- I made a quick example of what I also may be interpreting as a "material" resource type being dropped into an area takeoff?
- The only way I would know to grab segments of a linear would be to create new (N) while in that "Linear" takeoff type but I assume that doesn't help much. I'd sure be curious to see if another community member has figured out something.
- I do remember a previous and similar QTO software (PS) did give the option to expand/collapse the multiple parts that made up a "Linear" but I can't remember how it treated those parts within reports/output (it just didn't come up for me in the scopes of work I worked in at the time)
- I'm curious what the outcome or goal might be in case another user has figured out another workaround?
Segment length between points on linear tool would be extremely helpful. You could build a formula to optimize lumber/drywall/trim ordering. I tried building somthing similar in planswift but was unable to extract the segment length between points in PS.
+1 for adding segment length breakout between points for linear tool
Thank you both for your answers!
@Chaz, I'm working in a pretty niche area of museum lighting (so I'm attempting to word things in a more trade agnostic way), but breakouts would be requirements on a bid to show that Exhibit A costs $X and Exhibit B costs $Y etc. So, if I receive a layout that has many different exhibits on one page, when I go to place lighting fixtures, my dream would be an ability for the lights to know which Exhibit they have landed in so that I can move costs to the correct Exhibit in the bid.
As far as the linear, we're usually dealing with some form of linear LED fixture and needing to determine optimal numbers of power and control injection points along the run of the linear. So having this breakout would make that a lot easier.