Material list for preliminary pricing

[Evolution]

The building committee chair asked for a material list that could be used to have subs start preliminary pricing. I'm pretty sure I know the answer as to how accurate it may be as well as how to segrigate it to the addition only. Since I've been building for 60 years, I know the process and can advise the chairman the list will not be fully comprihensive and some assumptions will need to be made, such as what to include for demo of parts of the existing building, any temporary roof(ing) etc., potential unknown's such as electrical l/ mechanical oads being added vs existing panel spares vs adding a sub-pnl etc. all of the items that will marry the existing with the expanded sanctuary. I used a room divider to separate the existing from the new construction, and named it the Sanctuary Expansion, I can do a material list for the room (sanctuary expansion) and that should (or at least it appears) to include the exterior finish materials and interior as well. That sound correct? 

[Evolution]

I would like some help from the forum on the best way to build the material list for the expansion only.   I attempted the list by "area" and after spending some time on the list it appears to include not only the expansion but the existing for example lighting is for the entire sanctuary.  I modeled the plan using a room divider to separate the existing from the expansion and you can select each area independently from one another but that didn't seem to matter to the software when building the material list. My next try was to build the material list by the "room" which obviously only includes the interior finish items and not the Wall, floor construction, Roof or other exterior items. I can't  be sure the cut list is correct (it usually isn't). I'm pretty sure building material supplier's will send it back without a bid! Anyone with previous experience with this have suggestions? 

[Rookie65]

Maybe try copying the plan, then on the copy, delete everything that is existing, so there's only the new part left. Then you should be able to generate a material list from that.

[robdyck]

The key to control what is included on a partial material list (like for an addition) is Layers! If the plan itself is complete, this can be simplest to do in a copy of the plan file used specifically for the material list purpose (to avoid creating drawing errors on your plan set). Ensure that everything that is existing OR new is on separate layer so that you can exclude all existing items from the material list. You'll do that by unchecking those layers from the layer set being used for your materials list.

Another thing that can be helpful is to go through the Plan Materials dialog and rename materials for simpler identification. In the end, the time taken to modify the materials list will probably be the same or more than the time required for an experienced estimator to use their own methods.