Preparing a project for export

Why check first

The Excel workbook and the drawing images reflect the project exactly as it stands when you press Export. A group still called Group 3, a drawing left at scale None, or a zone that overlaps the legend all come out in the file and are much harder to explain to a QS than to fix beforehand. Re-exporting is quick, but the sweep below takes a few minutes and saves the back-and-forth.

Most of these checks are fastest from Review mode, where the Total tab shows every group on every drawing in one table. See The cross-drawing summary.

The checklist

1. 1

   Name every group. The group label becomes the Takeoff Description column in the workbook, so Group 1 tells the reader nothing. Click a label in the sidebar to rename it, or sort the Total tab by Label to spot default names across all drawings. See Managing groups.

2. 2

   Link the groups you want priced. Unlinked groups still export, but with empty Code and Description cells. On the Total tab, turn on Hide linked so only the groups still needing a link are listed, then use each row's Link button. See Linking to database items.

3. 3

   Assign groups to Services if you want the sheet sectioned by service. Groups with no Service export under Ungrouped, and the Service totals block only appears when there is more than one bucket to total. See Grouping marker groups into Services.

4. 4

   Draw zones on any drawing where you need a per-room or per-area breakdown. Without zones a drawing's sheet has a single Total Quant column. See Creating and editing zones.

5. 5

   Rename the Uncategorized zone if the default label does not suit the job. The name is set per drawing in the sidebar Zones view and is used as the column header in the export. See The Uncategorized zone.

6. 6

   Tidy across drawings. The same fitting captured twice on different drawings gives two rows in the Totals sheet. Merge duplicates from the cross-drawing panel before exporting. See Merging and deleting across drawings.

7. 7

   Mark finished drawings Completed. Click the status badge on the drawing card, or use Actions → Mark as Complete in the workspace. Completed drawings are skipped by the background searches, so nothing changes under you after you have signed a drawing off. See Drawing status.

8. 8

   Check the scale and calibration on every drawing. Open each drawing and confirm the scale selector in the header shows a real value (e.g. 1 : 50), not None. If a drawing was calibrated, the selector shows the calibrated ratio. See Setting the scale and Calibrating a drawing.

9. 9

   Set the drawing order. Sheet tabs in the workbook follow the order of the drawings in the project, so put the sheets in the sequence the reader expects before exporting. See Reordering drawings.

Scale problems to watch for

Scale is the check most often missed, and the one that does the most damage, because a wrong scale produces plausible-looking numbers that are out by a fixed ratio.

• Scale set to None — Linear and Area rows export as 0. Set a scale and answer Yes, Update All when ZeroCount asks whether to update the existing groups.
• Per-group scale differs from the drawing scale — a Linear or Area group can carry its own scale, which the workbook prints in the Scale column. Sort that column on the drawing's sheet after a test export to catch a stray 1:100 among 1:50 rows. See Per-group scale.
• Architectural drawings — under the Architectural scale system the workbook writes decimal feet and square feet rather than metres. The column header names the unit, so check it matches what the reader expects. See The scale system.

Zone naming across drawings

On the Totals sheet, zone columns are the union of every zone name across the project, and identically named zones share a column. Office 1 on Level 1 and Office 1 on Level 2 therefore roll into one column. If you want them kept apart, give them distinct names such as L1 Office 1 and L2 Office 1 before exporting.

Annotations and images

Annotation groups never appear as rows in the workbook, but they do appear in Export Image output, along with the Live Legend. If you have working notes you would rather not send out, hide the group or delete it before exporting images. See Group visibility.

Next steps

• The cross-drawing summary — check every drawing's groups from one table.
• Merging and deleting across drawings — remove duplicate groups without opening each drawing.
• Exporting to Excel — produce the quantities workbook.
• Understanding the workbook — what each column and subtotal means.