Integrating Chief and BuildersTrend

[BenjaminZ]

My company is moving to rely on BuilderTrend heavily and they are wanting to be able to import material lists from Chief.  Does anyone have experience with this and if so, can you point me in a good direction to find a knowledge base on doing this myself?  I have searched Chief videos on Producing Material Lists, but they leave so many unanswered questions. 

 

Thank you, 

[SNestor]

You should do a search on Chief Talk...there is much discussion regarding "material lists" in Chief. All I can say is...you better create an accurate model or you won't have a list worth using. The accuracy and dependability of the resulting material list will depend upon your "due diligence". The software collects the data you feed it...and it's easy to miss something.

 

Here's a link to a quick search I just did..."Materials List"

[FlynnBuilt]

Well, quite a few questions actually.

 

* The company is costing items in BT and some things Chief counts differently than we are needing.  IE: Soffit materials are generated in sq.ft. and we cost by linear feet because that is how our subs charge.  Is there a way to modify the way Chief calculates things like that?

 

* I see, for instance, under cabinets Chief breaks down the cabinets into door, drawer, pull, hinge, etc.  If we just wanted to price the cabinet as a whole unit is that possible ?

 

* The BT representative had never seen Chief before and was curious as to, when we exported to a BT file,  where does Chief pull the construction code and item information from? and is it possible to edit the description through the components tab of multiple items at a time?  IE: One of the ceiling joists showed as 3110 - Lumber 1st package.  If we wanted to change that is it possible?

 

 

Is there a way to narrow down the lumber exported? 

  I see about 30 lines of 2x6 at various lengths when set to Mixed

  I see everything under a total ft. count when using linear length

 I see roughly the same numbers as Mixed when I choose Buy List

 I don't think Cut list is anything I would need because we are not buying 3'2" boards, of course, they are being cut out of larger ones.

 Can this output be narrowed down to count only lumber sizes we actually buy to come up with an each count?

 

I'm sorry if this is a lot, but any assistance is appreciated because I am just getting the hang of using Chief let alone having to provide material estimates 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FlynnBuilt]

Thank you Steve.   I will dig into those posts and see what I can come up with.  Chief usually has really good training videos on their site, but I could not find more than a couple that pertained to what we are trying to do.