Once you have your building built with all of its components in place,
you can generate a list of building materials with the material list tools.
As you can see here, I have built the entire building, including the foundation,
the framing, and the trims and finishes.
The accuracy of the materials list is dependent upon how complete your building
model is. If you have not used the framing tools to build the deck framing,
floor framing, and roof framing, none will be included in your material list.
The material list tools can be found here under the tools drop-down menu.
Place your cursor on material list and you will find the child tools:
calculate materials for all floors, calculate materials in a room,
calculate materials in area, and materials list polyline.
You can calculate materials for all floors for the entire building.
Or, you can calculate materials in one room by selecting one or more rooms,
then go to the calculate materials from selection tool in the edit
toolbar at the bottom of your screen.
You can also calculate materials in area by clicking on this tool in the
toolbar, then click-and-drag a selection marquee.
The material list will then automatically display.
You can also use a material list polyline. To use the material list polyline,
you simply draw a shaped polyline around the area that you want the material
list to generate from.
Then you can select it and use the convert polyline tool here in the edit
toolbar at the bottom. Then select material list polyline.
Once your polyline is converted,
the material list polyline specification dialog will open where you can select
the categories that you wish to include in your material list.
You can toggle all on or off,
or select specific ones.
You can choose the floor levels that you want to include and how you want the
polyline selection box to pick objects.
You can include intersected objects,
all objects completely contained in the polyline,
or include objects that have their center points contained within the polyline.
Click on OK to close the dialog box,
then click on the calculate materials in polyline tool in the edit toolbar.
Or, you can go to the material list polyline tool,
then click-and-drag a polyline box.
Shape it as you need with the tools in the edit toolbar at the bottom of the
screen. Then when it's done, again,
click on the calculate materials in polyline tool in the edit toolbar.
Once you have your material list generated, you can add pricing information,
manufacturer specific information, and other comments.
The total will be displayed here at the bottom.
You can save multiple material lists by clicking on save active view.
Give it a name if you wish, then click on save.
Once you have saved it, you can close it and continue working on your plan.
You can access saved material lists here in the project browser,
under material lists.
Note that your saved material lists are static - they will
not update when you make changes to the model.
You will need to regenerate your material lists.
You can also export your material list for use in other programs by going to the
export material list tool here in the toolbar,
and selecting the file type that you want to save.
With Chief Architect,
it's easy to make estimated project cost projection with the material tools.