Cabinet Material & Hardware List

[Steve Crain]

Hi Estimator!

I just came across your plugin and played with it for a few minutes. I couldn’t get it to do what i wanted it to do right away so I thought I would just ask if this plugin can do the following:

I would make a kitchen cabinet as a component made of multiple components. Can Estimator….

1. give me a square footage and/or a sheet count of the 4′ x 8′ sheet material used to build the cabinet
2. give me a cabinet door quantity and square footage
3. give me a drawer box quantity and size
4. give me a hardware quantity and price for hinges, drawer slides, etc…
5. give me finishing labor per square foot for the cabinet doors
6. give me installation labor based on lineal foot or per cabinet box or something similar

It seems that this product can do this but I wanted to verify before I invested a lot of time into it.

Thanks so much!

[John Brock]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the inquiry. I am sure it can several of these things, although, as a builder (I am a custom home designer/builder) I typically assign unit prices to cabinets/vanities OR just use a quote and do not get into the minutia of each box. However, I will try to answer your questions best I can:

1. give me a square footage and/or a sheet count of the 4′ x 8′ sheet material used to build the cabinet

(JOHN) Estimator uses Components, Layers and Materials to base takeoffs. SO, a cabinet could be a Component (with nested components) – you can assign a price to the unit OR assign cost to the drawer, the pulls, the doors, shelves, etc. any individual item. For sheet goods, I would suggest using LAYER tab. If you had a LAYER (3/4″ sheet??), you could assign each face that layer, then choose the feet2 units and multiplier of /32 (4×8) – it would tally any faces selected, use their areas to get total, then divide by 32 and round up number of sheets. You can add waste BUT there is no way of maximizing a sheet or laying it out automatically or anything. SO, I suppose it could be done to some degree – does this make sense?

2. give me a cabinet door quantity and square footage

(JOHN) IF cabinet doors are COMPONENTS and have a dollar value in Estimator, they will report out (number of each and cost) – as far as AREA you could report area of the doors if they have cost assigned OR you could use Takeoff_Area to create areas for each face desired (collection for Doors, Drawers, panels, whatever) then report it that way. Takeoff_Area and Takeoff_Length are separate plugins on our site but read by Estimator.

3. give me a drawer box quantity and size

(JOHN) IF drawer box is a Component and has dollar amount assigned, it will show up in the report (if selected) – the size would display if the NAME of the component contains it – sizes are not reported otherwise (just unit chosen – length, area, volume)

4. give me a hardware quantity and price for hinges, drawer slides, etc…

(JOHN) This it can do – again if hinges, slides, etc. are COMPONENTS and have dollar amounts assigned, they will report the totals. Remember, Component information saved in Estimator will save with the component – so if you had a hinge in your library, with cost data assigned, and import this into another model, the cost will automatically be there, no need to re-input. Same for Layers and Materials cost data assigned in a model – I create these Layers and Materials, then save as for template file, so as not to re-input data.

5. give me finishing labor per square foot for the cabinet doors

(JOHN) Yes, you could ADD ADDITIONAL costs – for instance a door component may have a $/sf assigned for materials AND a cost/sf for labor.

6. give me installation labor based on lineal foot or per cabinet box or something similar

(JOHN) Couple of ways of doing this, but one easy way would be to use Take-off Length and trace LF or pick edges and report that way – again many ways of doing some of these tasks. I build highly detailed models of every house I build and generate everything inside SU and in one file – I use Quotes to cover labor, general conditions, etc. and attributes of geometry for all else. BUT I have not gotten too much in the minutia of cabinetry.

I hope this helps – please feel free to email me directly with additional questions to john@estimatorforsketchup.com

Thanks!
John Brock

[Author]

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