How does Chief calculate Thermal Envelope Area?

[pattyw]

I'm trying to clean up my components so that I can generate a cleaner material list.  I have ICF walls.  Chief created this as two different foams components for the inside and outside.  They are purchased together so I deleted one of them and relabled the other to ICF Blocks.  I also had another custom component called wall area that was thermal envelope area.  It looks like when I deleted one of the foam components, now my wall area went to zero making me think that somehow Chief was using that one specific foam component to calculate that.

 

How can I get this back?  I don't see what to toggle on my other foam component to get thermal envelope to start calculating again.

[Chopsaw]

I am not exactly sure how it all works but I would seriously consider modifying the material list rather than your wall definition.

[robdyck]

Are you using the macro (=thermal_envelope_area) as an accessory wall component? Does that work for any walls? That macro (added as a wall component) doesn't actually produce any data in the component tab when I give it a try.

I'm sure you are aware, but you can export the thermal envelope area separately.

[pattyw]

I've been experimenting with a sample file and ICF walls and there is no link between the foam layers and thermal envelope calculation so I'm still stuck trying to figure out why all the walls on some of my floors have that one component no longer end up in the material list.  Probably just a coincidence that I had just cleaned up the foam layers when I noticed my wall area disappeared.  I was able to delete all the components of my walls except for the component with the thermal envelope calculation and it properly showed up in the material list.

 

Thank you Robert, yes I'm aware I can export the thermal envelope area separately but I need some extra values in my material list to calculate costs.

 

The only way I see so far to manipulate what goes into the material list is to edit the components of the objects in the plan.  For walls, the only way I know how to manipulate the components is to either edit in default settings (for any new walls I place) or edit the layers in the wall definition.