What if we used layers as visual containers for pages and used "portals" as visual containers for phases?

This has been discussed before as Takeoffs On Overlays Instead of Pages. Also, this is a basic feature of EWP Studio (iStruct) for designing floor systems and such. The model was never tied to a ...

@ Justin Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the Cutting Stock Problem may not be reducible to a simple equation that will work optimally in every scenario. Related to the Knapsack Problem and ultimat...

Maybe pages should be subitems to layers instead...then you wouldn't have two different kinds of folders and you could sort by layer.

How about you share a report...and they can see everything in the takeoffs that is in the report so you don't have to configure both? It could be a layer or a composite of multiple different layers.

These sorts of problems would be easily fixed by switching gears to a negative sections method.

The preference to see sections or not could easily be handled with a setting as PlanSwift does. I'm sorry...I'm just not seeing the utility of the current method.

@ Lorin Ok. I see what you are saying regarding the way that cutouts currently work and how additionally showing the cutouts as sections would give incorrect totals--but that would be an inappropr...

@ Shawn You could easily copy positive sections and negative sections and paste them. What I am asking is why we are using this cutout method and not just using a negative section. And I would wa...

@ Lorin But one could also apply the positive area twice...right? I'm not sure I follow.

No. That is only giving the the total cutout area. I am wondering why the cutouts aren't represented as individual items, i.e. sections.

@ Chaz What you are saying could be done on the pages sidebar/tab. Other RFP documents could also be uploaded and marked up for keeping track of where you are going and what you are doing during QTO.

Before, I had suggested that the markups live on the plan pages and that generally they would be managed via the Plans tab. Then you could see your notes/markups per page...without a huge list of ...

So something like a template for prebuilt markups? Or just a place to keep track of markups?

@ David Quinn Further, create a feature whereby you perform basic takeoffs on a detail to create the required takeoff assembly for the plan pages. Maybe use AI to grab the schedule and make it par...

So copy and paste as new with an added prompt for a new name? Is that what we are after?

The problem is that the current use of folders is basically the same as that of takeoff folders. Early on, I had suggested that what we are calling "layers" should function as transparent overlays ...

Allowing people to undock any single tab or dock it to any side panel in any order should resolve Kevin's first issue and would go a long way in making new users feel at home.

Why not generalize this concept as lasso/multiselect items and change a common property across all items? Same functionality on the takeoff summary and reports...minus the lasso.

For the takeoff tab, can we change the "Default" layer to "All Layers" and see all the layers simultaneously per Kyle? Not sure if that implies something different for the reports tab. Custom prop...

Any timeline on keyboard panning and custom hotkeys?

@ KoryThis idea has been posited before as Takeoffs On Overlays Instead of Pages. I currently do this in PlanSwift for homes that are based on a model. The key to this working is that the root pa...