The Materials support extension to SmartPlan uses an expanded ADF file to create a viewing, interpreting, and calculation of quantities element to SmartPlan. It coincides with the release of a new desktop program, Materials X.

A materials takeoff is about quantifying amounts typically of hardscape. For example, if a parking lot is built you walk on the asphalt but below that there's other materials brought in like base rock or sometimes concrete that it rests upon. A typical workflow process is a contractor moves the dirt into the rough shape (rough grading), it gets compacted and then they come in with a motor grader and move the small amount of remaining dirt to a fine grade into the bottom of the parking lot otherwise known as subgrade. From there rock is brought in, spread and compacted to create a firm surface that can be quite thick. The asphalt paver then comes in and lays down the asphalt that's driven on.

Now the materials used to take the subgrade up to the finished product are fairly expensive both in direct cost and in the labor involved so the contractor needs to know quantities both for bidding and for ordering and time estimates. This is where a Materials takeoff comes in.

A Materials takeoff for most cases is probably a 2.5D instead being truly 3D. The user specifies the geometric area or length that we refer to as a structure. The depth associated with that area is based on thicknesses (section) of the differing types of materials that add up to create a total thickness of the structure. For example Light duty paving we've specified as an area called “LD paving” made up of .58 feet of AB (aggregate base rock) and .25 feet of AB (asphalt). The common name for something like LD paving is a structure. To make it even a little more complex we have to buy the material in tons so there's a factor called a multiplier used to make that conversion. From there the estimator can calculated the cost of materials, amounts to order, and to a certain degree the cost of labor/time.

The math works like this. I have 881.66 square feet of LD Paving. For the the rock we take the section .5833 and multiply it against our area (881.66 x .5833 = 514.2722). We then multiply it against the multiplier usually based on the weight per cubic foot. In this case (it varies) we're using 145 lbs per cubic foot. To convert that to tons we divide the 145 by 2000 and then multiply the resulting factor (.0725) with our cubic feet (514.2722 x .0725 = 37.284 tons) to get the quantity. Note that it's not all tons but materials allows for different measure units.

There are also other structure types that have corresponding geometry so for the basic materials takeoff we have areas, lengths, and counts. The use of multipliers is similar.

Materials projects are commonly split into Phase and Class to reflect the timing of the work and the type of work. For example phase 1 might be the demolition of existing structures whereas phase 2 is doing the concrete building pads.

A class is more of leftover from Underground takeoff but it has a use case in just materials. For example, the storm drain installation is one class “Storm” whereas the Sewer, Water, and Electrical might be others. You might even use Demolition as a class instead of phase. The reality is for our purposes it's simply a method of filtering.

Now filtering is important for Materials because there are multiple operations taking place over the same area and being able to remove extraneous data from view is crucial with our limited screen real estate and the potential complications on sites. Adding filtering capability is an important added function probably to the menu because separating it from the normal view items in importance is probably desirable. For example I might just want to see the data for phase 2 of Storm. This should reduce the visible on screen items tremendously.

Our current approach to Materials data is to currently store canned reports via the KMZ rather than do the math. Using Measure to break up quantities requires us to store the values of Structures and Materials and then do the math. The other advantage to doing so is that it's possible for the end user to override the section and alter the quantities. Since the thickness often varies this is really useful in the field.

A natural flow from Measure is quickly sending the information from a variety of means. Text versus phone call versus email for example. It also provides an openness to other vendors to meet halfway. Sending values to HCSS for example by having a share interface would benefit the customer but provide a framework for openness that enhances our value.

Joe Super has a project where he's paving a parking lot as part of the third phase of construction. The estimating department has done a takeoff with all of the materials quantities estimated and the geometry entered and saved the ADF file up to Access under that project directory. Thankfully they've broken it down into phases (1) for organization and also put it in the Paving Class. The job has been awarded and Joe goes out to start the paving operation.

Before he goes out to the field he downloads the ADF into SmartPlan and looks at what's there. Since he's only interested in the Paving in Phase 1 (ph1) he picks those from the bottom bar to just show those.

After pressing ok (mislabeled cancel) he sees just those structures that fit within the criteria. He can pick individual structures and press the I button on the action bar to display the same volumetric information he'd currently get in a KMZ exported version.

The HTML property pages on objects in KMZ is functionality we'd like to emulate in the ADF file. While we could simply add a container for the same Html I would suggest we actually store the values and then use a reporting template to represent the different objects.

By storing values it allows us to do calculations on Materials and Underground objects and do calculations since they are rather simple math. For example, we can draw a measure around parts of some objects, calculate the area that falls within them and report quantities that reflect that partial measurement.

It also allows the user to override office numbers for actual. An example would be a pad originally specified as 4“ (.333 section). If a rapid change came about and it had to be six inches the foreman could overide what the estimator specified with.5 for the section and show the updated quantities for on the fly ordering.