Materials List - Wrong wall length, wrong brick quantities.

[Sydney23]

I thought I'd try and get too grips with materials lists. An hour in and I'm at a loss.

I redefined my bricks from CA's Lego size to real world sizes (had to copy from the master library to my own before I could right click and edit them, then redefne walls to use those bricks).

Then I got a materials list and compared it to an online brick calculator.

The quantities were completely different. So I looked at the wall measurements in plan and elevation and guess what - they don't agree! Took an overview and the 3D view is different from the plan view, with bricks at 90 degrees to the wall at each end. I entered the elevation view measurements into the online calculator and guess, what, brick quantities still didn't match.

Take a look:



Could it be the returns at each end of the wall are affecting he elevation sizing and brick quantities? How would I get rid of those returns? Why on earth would I want plan and elevation views to be different?

Very odd.

I'll put a ticket in for this if need be. Again I find CA doesn't really cater for brickwork too well and just isn't ready to go out of the box the way we build in the UK. I'm pretty sure they could fix this in a day or two and sell a load of copies in the UK and any other country that uses cavity brick walls.

It feels like buying a car and finding the engine in bits on the back seat, in fact with multiple DBX's, a few bits are hidden in the boot (trunk?) too...

[Sydney23]

Does CA materials calculator pay any attention to the mortar thickness I put in, I wonder? Come to think of it, where are the sand and cement quantities for the brick mortar? And why are my inner skin blocks under 'framing'? User friendly this ain't.

[gteacher]

Short answer is that both calculations are wrong because they are both just using area cals. However Chief does indeed include the sides but even that appears to be wrong because they just use wall side areas and fail to include side brick thickness. For the formulas that they are using they are both correct but Chief is closer.

Brick cals should use whole brick quantities for wall height and length, which in your case would be 33 x 13 or 429 brick for the wall front. Then you can argue about the reuse of the cut bricks.

This points out the need that material cals formulas need to be under the control of the user as they are in every other cad program. Chief knows this but has refused to acknowledge the fact.

I have suggested several times that a option should be added to allow a user defined macro to be used for cals. In this manner the user would at least know what their getting and why?

[ambrozac]

......Does CA materials calculator pay any attention to the mortar thickness I put in, I wonder?.....

In addition to what Gerry has mentioned.....The Materials Calculator probably does pay attention to the mortar thickness, if calculating per each brick. However, I calculate by the sq. ft., then use the Unit Conversions to further break down to each. From my experience, this is what our brick salesmen do. They have a certain multiplier they use, depending on the size of the brick.

...Could it be the returns at each end of the wall are affecting he elevation sizing and brick quantities? How would I get rid of those returns?...

Yes, and the only way I know, is for another wall to directly connect to it, as shown in the jpg's below. You will also notice, that the walls in the middle will both calculate correctly (4 ft wide x 8 ft high), but the end walls calculate for wrapping the ends.

.....Come to think of it, where are the sand and cement quantities for the brick mortar?...

You can add sand and mortar as additional wall layers, if you wish. However, 10 is the maximum amount of wall layers, which is clearly not enough if planning on calculating all materials that belong in an exterior brick veneer wall. Another limitation is calculating any material in a wall that requires Lft. There is no material definition for true Lft, which is defined by only the length of the wall. This program requires the use of wall height as well.....So, if you use a product such as mortar net, it would calculate by the Lft. Then, if you have different height brick walls, it will require different Unit Conversions, depending on the wall heights.

....And why are my inner skin blocks under 'framing'?....

I would guess this may be because you have not closed the walls, to define a room. Once a room is formed, the categories will shift.

....User friendly this ain't.....

......and this has been expressed many times. Not enough discussion, very rarely mentioned, and will not likely change until Chief Architect's User base shifts towards this area. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and this area "ain't" been squeakin'.

[Glenn Woodward]

The Materials Calculator probably does pay attention to the mortar thickness

A brick materials Mortar Width IS taken into account when doing a ML - the larger the Mortar Width, the less bricks are calculated

[Sydney23]

Thanks so much for those inputs. It seems something I can use for rough costings, so long as I invest enough time into getting materials in walls, etc set up correctly. It's inevitably going to be complex I know, but thought one length of cavity brick wall shouldn't be too hard.

There really should be sand and cement in the list without adding mortar as another layer (which it isn't, I'm talking sticking bricks together, not render).

Just changed the framing materials reporting to cut list, looks good.

Materials reporting seems to have a lot of useful features, seems odd it's not set up a little for more 'out of the box' use, there's good money to be had from estimating software. I had HBXL estimating software a couple of year's ago and it was pretty amazing but it wasn't cheap. I think with not much tweaking CA could do something very similar (would need to add labour rates for each type of job, download live materials price lists from big suppliers, etc) and charge twice as much and/or simply sell a lot more copies.

Many of my customers ask me what I think their extension should cost. If I can at least show approximate materials costs that would be helpful to me, add in labour rates too and that would be even better. A quick look at labour suggests this is another thing that CA can do, but again only once set up by me.

Yet again with CA, I find myself saying that 90%+ of UK residential work would be covered by about 10 wall definitions, 10 different roof types, etc - that would probably take a CA guru a day to set up, then CA would become a must-have bit of software in the UK. It's all there, just don't understand why the interface/defaults set up is so poor.

If I ever get round to setting it up as suits the UK, I'll be offering my 'UK good-to-go CA' templates/defaults/set-up for around USD 2-3k per customer at trade shows and probably do good business. One day. No idea why CA don't do this themselves, the engine itself is great and making it easier to use would add greatly to its purchase appeal.