Video - InEight Estimate - On Center Integration

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, this is Rick Deans with InEight, and we're going to take a look at the integration that we have between InEight Estimate and On Center's Onscreen Takeoff software. I'm gonna give a little bit of a overview of the integration. We're gonna talk about some of the configuration options, and we'll go through some real world examples of all three of those. And then we'll talk about managing updates.

In terms of the integration itself, it's pretty straightforward. The workflow would be that we've got some plans, some specs with some 2D drawings, and we want to take off certain conditions or elements from those those drawings. So we do that within the On Center software. The On Center software allows you to take off lengths, turn those lengths into areas, perimeters, counts, things like that.

So in the On Center software, basically those takeoff conditions are gonna be identified, they're gonna be defined and through the use of the software, they're going to be quantified. And then ultimately, we want to update our cost estimate with that information. So there's a few different ways of bringing data into our Cost Breakdown Structure, but at the end of the day, the integration, which, regardless of which options you choose, we're going to be updating our CBS with those takeoff conditions from On Center. So let's take a look at some use cases and then we'll jump into the software and explore how this is done.

So the first use case is, I want the integration to add cost items to my CBS, and I want the descriptions, the quantities, and the units of measure, and maybe even the notes to come across. So that's a fairly standard use case. We've estimated these things in our takeoff tool, and now we want to add net new cost items with quantities and units of measure into the CBS. So let's take a look first at the On Center software.

This is where we're getting the data. And again, you know, this all begins with an image and someone has taken the time to import this image and then do their various takeoffs. And then all of these conditions that have been identified and quantified, they're all summarized on this Takeoff tab, this sort of worksheet over here. So this Takeoff tab is really important because you'll notice that for each element, we've got some ceiling panels here, there's really three sets of quantities.

There's a Quantity 1, Quantity 2, Quantity 3. In this case, we're looking at the square footage of those panels. We're also looking at the linear footage of those panels, as well as how many of them there are. So that's gonna become important as we look at some of the integration options.

You'll also notice with the door frames, you know, our first, you know, we've got a height here. Then our first quantities, how many of them there are, and then what's the linear footage of that door casing or door framing material? So let's jump over into Estimate, and this is where we're going to set up some of those options. So within the CBS, I'm just setting this up based on the CSI division codes, and I'm going to work on the finishes, and I want to, uh, be able to finish and account for the costs and the quantities of finishing those ceiling elements that we looked at earlier.

Onto the CBS...

When I'm on the CBS, I'm going to go under the More Actions menu option. And you'll notice there's an option here to Update / Import this into the CBS, and I'm going to choose the On Center On-Screen Takeoff software option. And what that does is that opens up a new tab here called our Estimate Design Data Integrator. And this is a tool that we use to basically map to those conditions.

Now what this is, this is really reading from that takeoff sheet from the On Center software. It's a little bit different because each one of these quantities, Quantity 1, Quantity 2, Quantity 3, we just express them as rows here. So you'll notice for condition one, we have three rows. For condition two, we have three rows.

So instead of using them as sets of columns, we treat them as discreet things that we can, uh, by checking these boxes, choose which of those quantities is gonna update our estimate. For the first example, what I want to do is I want to bring in the square footage of the ceiling work that we're going to be doing here. So I'm going to select the three items that deal with square footages, and I've selected those. Now down here on the lower right is an Import / Update Options dialogue.

And what I'm going to do initially is I'm going to bring these in as cost items. You saw there were some other options there. We'll explore those in a second. And it's up to me how much of this information I want to bring in.

Clearly, I want to bring in the quantities and the units of measure. I wanna bring in the descriptions and the notes. These can be selected or de-selected based on, on your needs. Uh, by default, they're all selected.

So I've chosen how I want the data to come in. And now what I'm going to do is hit the Update CBS button in the lower right, and you'll notice a couple things have happened. Uh, the status of those three selected items has changed from New -- new meaning these have not been imported. Imported Current means just that, they've been imported into the estimating tool, but they haven't changed.

they're still current. So let's take a look at the CBS and see what we ended up with there. The reason I selected Finishes is because the item that's highlighted is going to be the recipient of the data that we bring in from the takeoff tool. So in this case, I had highlighted finishes and sure enough, uh, I'm bringing in all of those ceiling elements with their associated quantities.

Now, I have also brought this other column onto the screen. It's called Data Source, and it's not something that you can change as a user, but what we do is we, for reference, we, we tell you where that data came from. Now you might also notice that green color in the, in the CBS as well. We shade these green while you're in this working session.

So while I have both the CBS open and the Design Data Integrator open, we're highlighting those items that that have been brought in recently. Um, if I were to close out of this job and open it up again tomorrow, I'd still have the data source data field available for reference to know which of these came in from On Center, but they would no longer be this, um, bright, fresh green color they would normalize to however, I've got my colors for my CBS levels set up here within Estimate. So that was our first use case. Pretty straightforward.

That's frankly how most of our customers use it. I want to be able to quantify those things in the takeoff tool, bring them into the estimate with those quantities associated. I'll show you a couple other options as well. I have an existing CBS with my existing cost items, and now what I want to do is I want to employ resources and their quantities on those existing cost items by leveraging information in the takeoff tool.

So let's, let's run through another example and I'll just jump right back to our CBS. And in this case, we have some takeoff elements that, uh, dealt with doors. And so you'll notice in my structure here, Division 08 - Openings, I've just, maybe in my template, I've, I've got a space for doors, a space for windows, et cetera. I don't have any detail in here just yet, but I'm going to highlight the Doors item and then run back to my integrator.

And what I'm going to do, let me de-select these items, and I'm going to come down to where my doorframes are. And what I'm interested in doing at this point is bringing in the counts of doorframes. So I've got, looks like 64 left-handed door frames, and I've got 11 right-handed door frames. So these are the, the data elements that I want to bring in.

What I'm going to do, I'm gonna change the import option from Cost Items to Resource Employments. And when I do that, you'll notice that this field is now open for editing. And this would give me a look at my different resources that I've got within the tool. So I'm going to point the left-handed door frames to my left-handed door frame material resource.

I'm not bringing that guy in, so we'll just go ahead and delete. And this guy, I want to be mapped to, you guessed it, in my right-handed door frames. And we'll go ahead and push that off as well. So I've mapped two elements from takeoff, two resources within InEight Estimate.

So now what I'm going to do, I've got my settings adjusted just right, I'm gonna hit Update CBS. And if we take a look at the CBS now under 8.1, I've got a couple of resource employments that brought in my 64 left-handed doorframes, and it brought in my 11 right-handed doorframes. For illustration purposes, I had a, a placeholder of a $100 bucks each, per unit for those.

So it did the math, it brought in $6,400 for the left-handed doors, $1,100 for the right-handed orders. And you can see those total up here on the CBS to $7,500 bucks. So by pointing at the resources, not only am I getting quantities, but I could be driving costs at the same time. So let's take a look at another use case, and it's really an extension of the second use case.

In this example, I don't just want to bring in a a single resource by itself. What I'd like to do is point toward a resource assembly. And so for those of you who are familiar with how our tool works, you can group together resources and call them a Resource Assembly. And in my door example, I'll show you what I did on my Setup tab.

This is where the resource assemblies live. I created a couple of different assemblies. I created an assembly for the left-handed doorframes in which I'm using, uh, the left-handed doorframe. So you'll notice in the upper right, I'm specifying the quantity of the assembly.

So what am I going to make here? I'm gonna make one doorframe. So what are the individual components I need to make up one doorframe setting? Well, maybe I need the doorframes themselves, maybe I want to bring in some hardware.

So for each doorframe, I want three hinges. One set of doorknobs. Maybe I even want to include a quart of enamel finish here, and maybe $5 worth of small tools. So I just, it's almost like a plug number, right?

Just a unit cost per door for, for, you know, chisels and skill saws and screwdrivers and the like. Okay, so this is what my assembly looks like. So now let's go back into our Design Data Integrator, and we're going to change the import options from Resource Employments to Assembly Employments. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to point these towards, this again, clear these out.

Just one click away. There we go. All right, let's see what we got here. So we should be bringing those in as Assembly Employments.

And what I'm going to do here is point these toward my Resource Assemblies. So my left-hand doorframe is gonna map over to my left-handed doorframe assembly, and my right hand door frame is gonna map over as well. So you've noticed we use the same column, whether it's a an individual resource or an assembly. And really what the, the guiding principle is going to be is what's selected here.

So it might not be real obvious, see me do it a few times. This is actually a drop-down here. So we're gonna point those toward Assembly Employments and let's go ahead and hit Update CBS and see what we get as a result. So back to the CBS, I go into my doors and now I've got the two assemblies.

And if I really want to look at this in detail, I'm gonna double-click on the Doors line item. And since these are assemblies, I'm able to expand them. So with my 64 left-handed doors, I'm actually getting the doorframes themselves. I'm getting 192 hinges.

I'm getting 64 sets of knobs. I'm getting 16 gallons of finish and $320 of budget for small tools and likewise with the uh, right-handed doors as well. So again, it's really up to you how you want to get that to work. Um, and again, we've explored three use cases where we're just bringing in the line items with quantities, units of measure, or we can map to individual resources or we can map to resource assemblies.

So what happens when things change? Uh, that's a pretty simple process. If the design never changes, if you'd ever get any updated drawings, if you don't fat finger over a number in the estimate. So the Design Data Integrator is gonna keep track of changes made in either system and we'll just explore that in the live software.

So if I look at the Design Data Integrator, again, you can see some of these elements have been imported and their current. I'm gonna go ahead and unselect some of these, some of them are new, we haven't touched those yet, but I'm gonna just go into InEight Estimate and I'm going to change the quantity of one of those cost items we brought in earlier. So I'm gonna just come in here and you know where this 15,546 square feet is. I'm gonna change that to 16,000.

I'm just gonna round it up. And now I'd expect us to be out of sync. If I go back to the Design Data Integrator, sure enough, it's telling me that first item has been imported, but it's no longer current. Well, that's pretty straightforward.

It's also the top row here. If I were dealing with 800 or 1200 or 10,000 elements that I was taking off, I might not see that on the list. So down on the bottom, we've got some filter controls here. So, you know, there's a checkbox here to Show Source Items Not Imported, to Show Source Items Already Iimported and to Only Show Imported Items That Have Changed.

So if I weren't interested in looking at the ones that I haven't imported and I just wanna see the ones that I've already imported that have changed, this filter is very helpful for that. And then I can just select that item and hit Update. And I'd expect it to go back to the 15,546. And you'll notice too that that item no longer meets the filter criteria.

So it's not even available here on the list. And sure enough, uh, back over here in Estimate, we've got 15,546 square feet. So that winds up our video presentation. Hope you found it useful.

If you need any additional help or support, by all means, contact us please at InEight.com. Thank you.