Assemblies

An assembly is a kit: a group of price list items that belong together, each one driven by the same measurement. Add the kit once, take the measurement once, and every item in it gets its quantity.

A bathroom is the obvious example. Floor tiles, wall tiles, waterproofing, shower screen, vanity, tapware — twenty items you add the same way on every job. As an assembly it is one click, and the floor area you measure drives every item that depends on it.

What comes with SmarteBuild

The library starts with 27 residential kits, built from the SmarteBuild Residential price list, covering a house from approvals to handover:

Stage	Kits
Before you start	Preliminaries and approvals · Site establishment
Slab	Waffle pod slab · Underslab services and lead-in
Frame and roof	Timber frame and trusses · Suspended timber floor · Metal roof, fascia and gutter
External walls	Brick veneer external walls · Lightweight cladding walls · Rendered blueboard walls · Windows and external doors
Services	Plumbing rough-in · Electrical rough-in and fit-off · Hot water and gas · Air conditioning
Lining and fit out	Insulation, plasterboard and cornice · Bathroom · Kitchen · Internal doors and fixing carpentry
Finishes	Internal painting · External painting · Floor tiling · Timber and carpet flooring · Garage door
Outside and handover	Driveway and paths · Fencing and gates · Clean and handover

They are a starting point, not a rule. Add one, delete what the job does not have, and save your own version — see Saving your own below.

Each one arrives as a plain list of items on their own quantities. Put the questions and formulas on top yourself, once, and from then on the kit measures itself — see The take-off sheet below.

Adding one

The Assemblies button at the top of the BOQ, next to Measurements, opens the window. The left side lists:

• Library — the assemblies you can use: the ones SmarteBuild ships and the ones your company has saved.
• On this job — the assemblies this estimate already uses, with how many items each one drives.

Click one and the right side shows exactly what adding it would do, before anything is created:

• Measurements it uses — the fields it needs. A field marked reused is already on this job, so whatever you have measured against it carries straight over to the new items. Any measurement only needs to be taken once.
• Items it adds — each item, the cost code it lands in, which measurement drives it, and its price. Items already on this job are marked, so you can see you are adding another. Anything that cannot be added says why.
• The cost at one of each, so you know the size of what you are adding.

Add N items to the job creates them. They land in the cost code each item belongs to, exactly as importing one item does, and the ones driven by a measurement come in on that measurement.

Setting the measurement

An assembly’s items have no quantity until its measurement has one. There are three ways to give it one:

• Type it in the Measurements window.
• Measure it on the plan with Take-Off.
• Work it out on the assembly’s own take-off sheet — see below.

Whichever you use, every item on that measurement updates at once.

The take-off sheet

Under On this job, click an assembly to open its take-off sheet. This is where an assembly stops being a list of items and starts doing the arithmetic for you: you type in the room, the wall, the window, and it works out every measurement the items need.

The sheet has four tabs.

Measure

A row for each thing you are measuring, a column for each question the assembly asks, and the measurements it works out on the right.

#	What it is	+/−	Length	Height	Wall area	Studs
1	North wall	+	8.4	2.7	22.68	20
2	South wall	+	8.4	2.7	22.68	20
3	Window W3	−	1.8	1.2	2.16	0
				Total	43.20	40

What it is is your own note — “north wall”, “less W3”, “ensuite”. The +/− button flips a row between counting towards the total and being taken off it, so openings, cut-outs and deductions come off rather than on. Click it to flip.

The totals at the bottom are what the items are priced on. If a formula cannot be worked out for a row — a divide by zero, a value left blank — that cell shows ERR and the row is left out of the total.

Change anything and the totals move straight away, but the items keep the numbers they were last given until you press Recalculate. A warning across the top says when the two have drifted apart. Recalculate works every measurement out and puts the new totals onto the items.

Measurements

The measurements themselves: what each one is called, its unit, how it is worked out, wastage and rounding.

• Formula — leave it empty and you type the number in yourself. Fill it in and it works itself out from the answers on every row of the sheet.
• Wastage % — added on top of the result. 10 on a tile area gives you 10% more.
• Rounding — exact, round up, round down, one or two decimals, or into and by pack size. Sheets and packs round up; hours usually do not.

Questions

What the sheet asks on every row: wall length, height, how many. Each question has a long name for the column heading, a short name for formulas to use — L, H, QTY — and a starting number.

A question can also be a list of choices instead of a typed number. The estimator picks the name, the formula gets the number behind it: “Double skin” → 100, “Single skin” → 50. Use it for anything that is really a decision rather than a measurement: wall type, roof pitch, fixing centres.

Items

Every item this assembly prices, and what that comes to.

Priced off is a dropdown on each row: pick a measurement and the item takes its quantity from it, pick its own quantity and it goes back to whatever you typed — the number it had is still there waiting. The list offers every take-off field on the job, not just this assembly’s, because one measurement often drives items in several kits: the same wall area pays for the bricks, the wrap and the painting. This assembly’s own measurements come first, then each other assembly under its own name.

An item on a calc sheet or a formula of its own is left alone; the row says which it is on, and putting it back on its own quantity does not disturb it.

Add item puts one more item on the assembly. Type what you are after and it looks in two places at once:

• Already on this job — an item in the BOQ that is not on this assembly yet. Put it on this moves it onto the measurement chosen above.
• From the price list — anything you can price. Add it brings it into the job, into the cost code it belongs to, exactly as importing one item does, and puts it on the measurement in the same action.

Either way the quantity is right immediately — there is nothing to press afterwards.

Writing a formula

A formula is written the way you would say it, using each question’s short name in curly brackets:

You want	You write
Wall area	{L}*{H}
Perimeter	({L}+{W})*2
Studs at 450 centres	CEILING({L}/0.45)+1
Labour hours	{L}*{H}*{$P}
Nothing under 5 m	IF({L} > 5 THEN {L}*{H} ELSE 0 END)

The chips under the box put the questions, the operators and IF… in for you, so there is nothing to remember. {$P} is the measurement’s own productivity rate — the hours or the rate per unit — kept separate so you can change the rate without touching the formula.

CEILING rounds up, FLOOR rounds down, and ROUND, ABS, SQRT, POWER, MIN and MAX all work as you would expect.

Try it is the part worth using. Type in some answers, press it, and it tells you what the formula gives — wastage and rounding included, exactly as the sheet will show it. If the formula is wrong it says what is wrong with it, instead of waiting until the numbers are on a job.

Building one from scratch

New assembly at the bottom of the Assemblies window starts an empty one on this job. Build it in the order the sheet is laid out:

1. Questions — what you will be measuring. Start with the two or three that everything else comes from.
2. Measurements — a formula each, tested with Try it.
3. Items → Add item — search for each item, pick the measurement that drives it, and add it. It does not matter whether it is already on the job or still in a price list.
4. Measure — type in your first real take-off and check the numbers.
5. Tick those items in the BOQ and Save as assembly…, and it is in your library for the next job.

The sheet’s header has three buttons: rename it, copy it, or take it off the job. The copy makes a second copy of the whole assembly here — questions, measurements and every line — which is the quick way to do the same room twice with different numbers.

Taking it off the job removes its questions, measurements and lines. The items stay in the BOQ on the quantities they have now. It is refused while anything is still priced off one of its measurements, so nothing loses its quantity without you saying so — set those items to its own quantity under Items first.

Saving your own

When you have built something once, save it and never build it again.

1. Tick the items in the BOQ.
2. Save as assembly… in the Actions menu on the toolbar.
3. Give it a name and save.

It goes into your company’s library, and any job can add it afterwards. Nothing on the current job changes.

Save over an existing one in the same window replaces one of your own assemblies instead of adding another, so a kit you have improved on this job becomes the version everyone gets next time. Jobs that already used the old one are not touched.

An item already driven by a measurement is saved with that measurement, so the kit arrives wired up on the next job. An item with its own typed quantity is saved with a measurement of its own name, for whoever uses it next to fill in once.

Only price list items can be saved

An assembly is a list of price list items, so an item typed straight onto a job cannot go into one. The window lists any that were left out. Add them to a price list first — see Suppliers and products — then save the assembly again.

Saving needs access to Price lists with permission to edit it, because the assembly is shared with everyone in your company.

Keeping your library tidy

Hover an assembly under Library and two buttons appear: rename it, or remove it from your assemblies. Both apply to the library copy only — jobs that already used it keep their items and their measurements.

The assemblies that come with SmarteBuild are shared with every builder, so they cannot be renamed, changed or removed. Add one, change it on the job, and save your own version.

What an assembly does not do

• It does not change prices. Items come in at the price list price that applies to you, the same as any other import, and Renew prices keeps them current afterwards.
• It does not stop you adding the same kit twice. Add it again and you get a second set of items; the preview tells you which ones are already there.
• Deleting items from a job does not change the assembly in the library, and changing the library does not reach back into jobs that already used it.