Inside Track
Heber Allred zzTakeoffCollecting Input: Line Widths / Area Calculation
I'm curious how you guys would expect a "Linear with Width" to calculate. Currently it just takes the total length and multiplies it by the width to get the "Area".
We're working on visually displaying the width of lines, but depending on how we calculate it, will impact the results.
Would you expect a linear with width to operate more like an "Area" takeoff where it calculates the offset points and shows 64 SF (in the case below), or would you like it to show the line width visually, but then just multiple length of the line * width to get the area of 80 SF? I'm curious what you guys think. In these examples both have a "Width" of 4 FT.
You probably need three offset options:
Centre - the offset is centered on the line => 80 SF
Inside - the offset is inside the line => 64 SF
Outside - the offset is outside the line => 2 x 4 x 10 + 4 π (± 92.57) SF
This would also be helpful for controlling where the line appears visually relative to the vector.
I thought PS gave the option for inside/centerline/outside options, but now that I remember I think it was always inside or outside (depending on the user's skew/slant on things) - personally I always took the outside to make sure I wasn't giving away or losing LF. I've always been for the line width more in it for the visuals but I always wondered what that really meant in terms of preciseness. With my experience on PS I always stopped short at the outside of the visual width so as in the example above I would end up with 16 LF * 4' = 64 sf so I would say stick with the PS model as at least the first iteration and advise or teach the userbase to stop short of the visual width. The QTO I've been using for the last 9-12 months is centerline only and I really am not a fan because I'll have to go back and adjust if I didn't gauge the centerline correctly and it bothers me enough to not visually see the width fitting withing the drawing lines.
Thanks for the input. Yeah, we may need to start with just taking the linear distance * width to get area for now to keep it simple. Then we could release an update in the future to enable "true area calculation" or similar which compensates for overlap.
Do you like seeing the darker line where the original line was drawn (before applying the width), or do you think you would want that hidden? Maybe we just have an option for whether to show the main line. Or, maybe it can just show that darker line if it's selected.
No visible original line:
I like the option, it may clutter up the takeoffs on some trades, but I think having it visible would be useful, so, my vote is based on pure greed... both
My vote! Probably because PS and vector tools have trained me but always adaptable
I think even with straight linear takeoff there should be options to show width. Displaying the width visually (without automatically calculating area) is really useful for confirming scale and keeping the focus on line length.
In my case, as a mechanical insulator, I’d use this for calculating square footage (surface area) around pipes and both round and rectangular ducts. I’d rather have the ability to customize the calculation than be locked into preset surface area results.
I’ve found in PlanSwift that the center option was the easiest and least confusing, but I really like the idea of the darker line—it would take a lot of the guesswork out.
One other note: when using metric, width currently defaults to meters only. Most of our work when metric is dimensioned in millimeters, so being able to input values in mm without converting would be a big improvement.
Agreed on linear width. Being able to show pipe size (and point diameter) is useful for visualizing shoring and conflicts. Not directly a takeoff function but still very useful for planning purposes.
Also, double plus on mm measurements for 1-dimensional inputs.