Schedules

[designbychad]

Hi All,
I am "playing" with the use of finish schedules and fixtures. The purpose is to give the builders and owners a very complete list of items required, like window stool and apron, base board, door knobs, wall finish, floor covering- by manuf. style, color and finish -in every room. So debate is- will CA schedules really work faster and as good as an excel spread sheet I build and use as a template/ What is your experience?
Thanks,
Chad Williams

[billemery]

Material lists, and schedules in Chief have some significant limitations; but I can get most of what I need with them.
I would consider it a good starting point, and bring it into excel for refinement.

For example: I can get my windows, casing, stool, apron, and lintel with Chief; but I can't get the window surrounds.

The entire material list and schedule system is somewhat obtuse, even for experienced users; I think it could use a thorough rework, to make it more flexible and easier to customize.
Getting an accurate material list requires a lot of work on the front end to set it up, and also requires me to make a very accurate model. Most of us don't want to put that kind of effort into the process.

[mkennedy]

I struggle with CA schedules on many levels. Materials and component generation is OK, but it's annoying editing the label in one place then editing the comments in another, and having neither accessible from the schedule.
I can get regular text to display a grid, so I can use square marks, alph aor numeric, and set the width of the first column of my schedule equal to the line hegt so that it looks the same as the callout on the plan BUT, i can't get more than one line of text, so the schedule gets too wide.
I can get Rich Text to give me more than one line of text BUT no grid.
At present the only way I know to manually build a graphically correct schedule involves using a spread sheet or word processor.
I could go on, but I think Bill put it quite succinctly - It's a little obtuse.