Do a Job · Everyday · 5 min
Export a take-off
An Excel workbook for someone to price, a PDF report to issue, the flashing workings, or plain CSV: with pictures of where each quantity was measured.
A take-off that can’t leave the program isn’t a take-off. Export is the last step: measure, group, then send.
- Go to the Take-off page and choose Export, or use File › Export take-off….
- Choose the Export format (below).
- Tick the tables to include: the Bill (one line per group), the Working (every step of how each quantity was reached), the Measurements (each one with its page and the scale it was taken under) and, if you used it, the Order summary.
- Optionally, add pictures of where each quantity was measured (below).
- Choose Export and save the file.
Which format
- Excel workbook (.xlsx)
- For somebody who will price it. Each table is a sheet; figures are held at full precision and shown rounded to your setting.
- A report, as a PDF
- For everyone else. The same tables laid out as a document that can be issued, with the drawing it came from, the units, the date, who produced it and what the figures don’t cover.
- Flashing workings (Excel, still calculates)
- The order sheet an estimator keeps beside the drawing, with the arithmetic left in the cells as formulas. Only groups set up with Work out… are listed.
- Tables, as CSV
- The plainest form: one file per table. Use it only when something downstream reads nothing else.
How much detail a PDF report has
How much detail sets what the report says, and chooses the tables for you. You can still switch tables on and off underneath it.
- Summary
- The bill and Drawings used: a short list of the drawings the figures were measured from (D1, D2…), with each drawing's number, revision and the pages used. One or two pages: what you send a client.
- Standard
- The summary, plus How each group was measured (which drawings, how many measurements, and what was left out of the figure and why), and the step-by-step working for each group. The starting point.
- Full workings
- Everything: also each measurement, and every line of how each group was set up, as it’s recorded.
Tick Start with a contents page to list each part of the report with the page it starts on, each one a link.
Showing where each quantity was measured
Under Show where each was measured you can add a numbered picture (Fig. 1, Fig. 2 …) for each quantity. Each picture is redrawn from the same points and scale as its quantity, never read off the page, so it can’t disagree with the number. In the PDF they follow the tables; in the workbook they’re on a Figures sheet.
Links back to the drawing
Tick Link each line back to the drawing and a line of the bill, and each measurement, opens the drawing at the page it was taken on. Someone reading your take-off can see how you went about it, instead of taking the number on trust.
- In the PDF report the first cell of the row is the link (it’s coloured, and clicking it opens the drawing at that page in a new window).
- In the Excel workbook it’s a hyperlink on the same cell, and opens the drawing in whatever opens PDFs on that computer.
- The link names the drawing file, and its folder if you give one, so keep the drawing beside the exported file, or tell it where the drawing is.
- It goes to the page, not to the exact spot. The pictures under Show where each was measured show the spot.
Your header
If you have set a company header and logo in Settings, you can include it per export. A working sheet such as the flashing workings doesn’t carry a letterhead.
In DatoMark Export the take-off