Exterior Siding Sqft in a Schedule

[LegacyChief]

Hello all!

I've been tasked by my organization to show the exterior siding net sqft totals (cutting around doors and windows) in schedule format. I've tried and tested a few methods with little to no luck. 

1st thought was to use a Wall Schedule, but there are no default options for area.

2nd thought was to use a custom schedule with wall material regions and selecting area, surface as an available column. (This only shows GROSS sqft, not NET)

Using Google Gemini (AI) for assistance, I tried creating a custom field with a macro but continued to get either the exact text from the macro (even with "Format as Number" checked), or "ERROR"

There are instances where we would plan for two different material types, usually a stone wainscot as a pony wall, and would want this separated as well. 

Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[joey_martin]

The information lives in the materials list but, while in elevation camera create a polyline and aim that polyline to a custom schedule. 

[LegacyChief]

Hey Joey, 

Thanks for the quick response. Just tried your polyline method for this particular project and that works. 

Long term were hoping for more automation. Being able to use a template that is set up with the schedule already on the layout and updating automatically as we draw our walls in (similar to how a door schedule works). 

Thought there might be a macro that could be used to get this automation set up for long term goals. 

[basketballman]

Sheets of wall sheathing x 32 maybe a way to derive what you need.

  Area polyline is also good and in some cases may give higher level of separation and accuracy ..

[JiAngelo]

Don't laugh, but I often add a 0 thickness layer to either side of my wall's framing and assign it Sherwin Williams colors.  SW7100 for exterior and SW7000 for interiors.  Material report gives me the square footage of the paint colors and I export it to an XLS that SUMIF's the paint colors to give me the overall total.  I use @basketballman's method to verify.

[basketballman]

14 hours ago, JiAngelo said:

Don't laugh, but I often add a 0 thickness layer to either side of my wall's framing and assign it Sherwin Williams colors.  SW7100 for exterior and SW7000 for interiors.  Material report gives me the square footage of the paint colors and I export it to an XLS that SUMIF's the paint colors to give me the overall total.  I use @basketballman's method to verify.

 

TY

Great idea.   

I also mess with the wall layers when looking for quantities of 5/8" FC drywall, cement board or tile in showers, etc.

[SHCanada2]

does the material list not work for siding? i did a quick test on a wall with a garage door and it appears to work

[JiAngelo]

My problem is the materials selected. For instance, James Hardie lap siding reports in linear feet, as does Certainteed's D5 Monogram siding.  My contractors charge by the square foot.  Changing all the walls to stucco or Certainteed Board & Batten would give me the correct square footage, but it is easier for me to add a 0 width layer for paint to the siding walls and get their square footage when necessary.  I can ignore the paint color if I don't need it. (And its not a paint color anyone ever selects inside the home.)

 

[tundra_dweller]

51 minutes ago, JiAngelo said:

For instance, James Hardie lap siding reports in linear feet, as does Certainteed's D5 Monogram siding.

 

You can control how a material reports qty to the material list with the "Adjust Material Definition" tool.

Also I'm thinking maybe a material region with air gap as material might be a quick way to tally up siding coverage in sq ft. I don't remember if you can assign material regions to schedules at the moment though.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2025 by tundra_dweller

[scottharris]

You might try using a macro on your wall in the ‘object information’ panel.  Then, you can use that variable in your schedule.  Note walls can have an upper and lower; and, the [0] is the outer layer of your wall.  I exported the wall with the macro if you want to import it.

Macros: 

  %upper_layers[0].area.round(2)% 

  %lower_layers[0].area.round(2)%

 

Wall SQ-FT.calibz

[Chrisb222]

On 12/26/2025 at 1:28 PM, scottharris said:

You might try using a macro on your wall in the ‘object information’ panel.

 

Scott, I'm getting an error when there isn't a pony wall.

 

I got the script to recognize the presence - or lack - of a pony wall, however every wall segment with a different sq ft area generates its own row in the schedule. I also couldn't use the Total command to sum the areas of the wall segments.

 

 

1: Is there a way to cause the schedule in the attached example file to combine all like wall types into one row, regardless of differing sq ft areas?

2: Can the schedule total numeric results of macro scripts?

 

See the attached example plan:

Wall Schedule Example.plan

[DBCooper]

Quote

1: Is there a way to cause the schedule in the attached example file to combine all like wall types into one row, regardless of differing sq ft areas?

2: Can the schedule total numeric results of macro scripts?

 

I almost got it.  You need to set your sq ft custom object fields to "format as a number" and then you can set your schedule to "calculate total" and "sum similar rows" for these columns.  Unfortunately, your custom macro gives you an "error" for the non-pony walls but this might be something you can fix in your custom macro by having it just return 0 for these cases instead of "n/a".

 

Edited December 31, 2025 by DBCooper