I'm going to show you how to use the CutList plug-in to create a cut list in Excel.
I have here a simple coffee table open. This is a table I made for my
sister and brother-in-law; it's got four legs, four aprons and a top.
So I've already got the CutList plug-in installed, so I'm going to come up to
plugins (Extensions) and click on the plugins menu option and come down to CutList.
The options shown here for output are Web Page, CSV (which is a comma separated value
- it's just a simple text file), and CutList Plus. I'm typically going to use
either Web Page or CSV. The Layout Output I don't care about,
that's going to help me determine where to cut parts out of material.
I don't need that for this so I'm going to uncheck those. Include here means what
what parts is it going to include in the cut list and I always want Components.
Sheet goods are there; they're determined by the material you've chosen for your
part and so if you look down here where it says Material Words or Sheet Material Words,
you can see some terms here, so if you have applied a material to some of
your components that includes these words, those are considered by this
CutList plug-in as sheet goods. Similarly for parts, if you give your
component name a name that includes, in this case, part or hardware, it will also
be included here. So I just don't worry about those,
I don't name things like that in here and I don't have any sheet good materials
chosen so I'm not worried about whether those are chosen or not. So, I'm going to
click, well... if I want to save these settings, you know some of the
stuff unchecked, some checked, I can click Save Settings and that means the next
time I open this it will come up in this configuration. So I'm going to click Run
and it's going to say "Nothing was selected. Do you want to select all visible?"
I'm going to say Yes. Now usually if you have, say, multiple scenes and
you've got lots of parts open, you don't want to select, say, apron six times, so I
would typically select just my model before I run CutList. So yes, I want
to select all visible. I'm going to say OK this time, and I've got my cut list
here and this is a good thing to do before you output to the CSV or the
Excel file, just to make sure that the numbers make sense. So, what I'm looking
for here is the correct numbers of parts; I've got four aprons, four legs, one top. I want
to make sure that my dimensions all make sense. I don't want anything that says
something like approximately, you know, 2 and 13/64. So these numbers all make
sense so that looks good. So I'm going to close this and then I'm going to, next time,
output it to a CSV file. Before I do that though, I need to change
a setting here. Now notice that the whole table selected now. The plug-in did
that before it created the cut list there. One thing I need to do, to be able
to export the CSV file to Excel, is I need to change a setting. So I'm going to
come up to Window and Model Info, and under Units, typically this is checked.
It says Display units format, and what that does is, it puts in the little quotation
mark or the inch mark after any inch numbers in my output, or in a dimension,
or any time I'm using it. That inch mark is going to confuse Excel and make it
think that numbers are text, so I'm going to uncheck that and you'll see when I do
that I lose the inch mark here. So I can close that, and I'm going to go back to
the plugin, and just to show you how that works I'm going to run it again,
and you'll notice this time I don't get the inch marks on here, that's what
I want when I output to the CSV. So I'm going to check CSV, uncheck Web Page,
and click Run, and it tells me where the cut list is written to. It puts it in the
same folder that my project file is stored in. So I'm going to close that,
close that, and open up (I've got a shortcut here, okay) the original file,
or my SketchUp file, was Coffee Table - Lopez, and if I look here, I've got a new
file so this Coffee Table - Lopez underscore CutList. So I'm going to
double-click on that, and the cut list opens in Excel or whatever spreadsheet
program you have. So I've got the same numbers I had before. A lot of this
information I don't need, so I'm just going to highlight these cells, hit Delete.
I'm going to highlight this column, these part numbers I don't need,
and right-click and Delete. I don't need the board feet calculations, or total
lengths, or materials; I'm going to highlight those, right-click, and Delete.
All I care about is the quantity, the description, and length, width, and, thickness.
Now, I don't necessarily want them in this order. Now, on TalonNet,
you can download the cut list that we use at Cerritos in the shop.
You've probably seen it before, so I have that open in a separate window. So this is
that cut list; I'm just using Alt-Tab to get to it. So I've got the name of the
part, the material, which I'll have to add separately, that does not come out
of Sketchup, the quantity, the thickness, the width, and the length. So those are
the five things I need - name, quantity, thickness, width, length. So I'm going to
Alt-Tab back to my file. Here, this is the CSV file, and I'm going to highlight
apron, leg, and top, right-click, and Copy, and then I'll Alt-Tab over here;
that's the name of the part. Now I'm going to right-click in this first cell, and what
I want to do (I've got some different options here) there's just a regular Paste,
Values, Formulas, etc, etc. I want to just bring the values over. I don't want
to bring any formatting with me because it's going to mess up my spreadsheet here.
So I'm going to click on Values and there's my names. Go back over here,
and same thing, I'm going to highlight the parts, I'm sorry, the quantities,
right-click, copy, Alt-Tab back over here. I'm going to click in the first cell here,
right-click, and once again come down to Values [phone ringing] (bad time for a phone call -
there we go) Okay, so I just put the values in - oops, no I didn't - the values.
Okay, the next thing I want is thickness. Now, when CutList
outputs this it puts them in the wrong order, so I'm going to grab the thickness,
once again, highlight, right-click, copy, click, right-click, Values. I'll grab the
widths, right-click, copy, and paste the values; copy, right-click, and values.
Just click out of that cell. Okay, so notice now that because this cut list has formulas
in it, it picks up, it's going to add a 1/4 of an inch to the thickness,
so I went from 3/4 to four-quarters [4/4]. I went from two and a quarter to 10/4.
It adds a half an inch in width so it went from three and a quarter to three and 3/4
and it adds one inch in length, and then it calculates the board feet,
and it gives me my extra material that I might want to buy when I'm at the lumberyard
and I can actually change that. Notice there's a comment there, I can put in,
if I want to, say 30%. I'm going to enter point three and Enter, and then I come
down to the bottom here and it totals these for me by the thickness, the rough thickness,
so I need almost 20 board feet of 4/4 material and about
four and a half board feet of 10/4 material. So I would now save
that and I'm good to go with my CutList.