Commercial Estimators

Earlier this year my company purchased Crystal and Power Takeoff from Ziatek. We are now actively working on upgrades to be released at the World of Concrete show in late January, 2008.

We would be very interested in hearing from commercial estimators as to what features are the most important. Not necessarily from our two products, but from other products that you may have experience with...

What features can you not live without?

Now there's a trick question with a never ending answer. So many facets, important to a wide variety of people. I think this could be one of the best threads on the net for me.... I can't wait to see the various answers. I know my preferences may seem typical to some and yet, maybe be extraordinary to others...

• Of course, cost versus "easy-learning-curve" is one of my pet peeves...
• Reporting abilities...
• Formatting of reports...
• Ease of typical project set up...
• File types.... Can a program read all typical pdfs, tiff, dwg, etc.
• SPEED.... Is it a slow cumbersome program....?
• Yearly maintenance, or subsription costs...
• Does it integrate with other Windows programs? I.e. Outlook, Word, etc.

These are just a few right off the top of my head and I am sure this thread will grow quickly.... To those programmers reading this and the corporate heads that make the decisions, please read!   We all want a perfect and seamless program.... right!

I sincerely anticipate other view points on this subject.....

 

 

OST is my obvious choice. Not so much for the take-offs but for seamlessly incorporating them into excel spreadsheets. Beyond that we only use a structured excel, and access package tailored to our procedures. But without OST it would be a nightmare to input all the info.

One question for decDigital, when you say you bought Ziatek, did you buy the company or just a license of the program?  Does Ziatek allow users to develop upgrades?  Or is decDigital the company?

On topic, One of Markafly's items was reporting.  I agree. 

That's why I like OST.  It can print the plans with the takeoff in color.  That way you know exactly what is taken off and what item it was countedas what. 

 For example, If I only report that there is 1000 CY of concrete in the footings, you have no idea if I got everything or if I counted those 8' wide footings correctly.  Some software, that's all you get from their reports.

In response to your question, a quick clarification. I did not buy Ziatek, I simply purchased the source code for 321...Takeoff!, Crystal and Power Takeoff. We also have licensed RoofDraw, RoofMaster and eTakeoff. decDigital will be adding the features that we're discussing here.