This
week’s task to calculate the cost of a wall using the parameters that Revit
uses and updates as we model.
Depending
on which version of Revit you use, there are add-ins available from the AutodeskExchange site. Some of the add-ins have a cost associated with them, but I
tend to stay away from most of them because as you update to the newest version
of Revit the add-ins do not transfer and so you have to track down the newest
versions and download them over and over. Because of this hassle, I would
suggest using this method; there are a lot of steps below but it is broken down
to show every step.
Here
is a Material Takeoff distilled down to basics (for reference the wall shown is
12’ high simple CMU wall that is 15’ long).
The
Family, Length, and Material: Area are from the fields that Revit
provides. The others I created to complete this task.
Here
was my process:
1. After
selecting the three fields from the Revit menu my Takeoff looks like this:
2. Next, using
the construction calculator app I’ve mentioned in class I calculated the
surface area of a CMU block (7 5/8" x 15 5/8" = 119.141 in² à 1 sq ft =144 in²
so 144/119.141 = .827). The area of a CMU block is .827 sq ft. This is
what I wish Revit would do for me, but it is an easy fix and worth a little
math.
3. With
this number, I choose edit… in my Properties menu next to Fields.
4. In
the menu that opens, I choose Calculated Value… to make new
fields.
5. The
first field I made was called Quantity and I filled the options to read like
this:
My Takeoff schedule now says that the quantity of
blocks is 217.654172. I will clean the units up at the end…
6. I
next wanted to estimate the waste/scrap and decided that 10% would be a good
number. I went back to Calculated Values… and made a new field
called Waste/Scrap and used the following parameters:
My Takeoff schedule now says that the quantity of
blocks is 239.419589
7. Lastly,
I went to Lowes.com and saw that a single block costs $1.87. With this
information I went back to Calculated Values… and made a new
field called Cost:
Be sure the type is changed to Currency
8. Now
my Takeoff tells me the material cost would be 447.71, but we need to clean it
up
9. In
the formatting tab I change the alignment of all fields to center
10. In
the formatting tab I (individually) change the Field Format… of
Quantity and Waste/Scrap fields to Fixed and rounding to 0 decimal places
11. Lastly
in the formatting tab I change the Field Format… of Cost by
adding a Unit Symbol
12. My
simple block takeoff now looks much cleaner and I know that if I were to buy
the materials at Lowe’s, my wall would require 239 blocks and cost me $447.71.
