Extracting Shape Dimensions for Bill of Materials

[dandino]

Hi all,

I'm using Visio 2007 and want to be able to generate a bill of materials to aid in my estimating.  What I really need to do is to add price data to each shape I use when creating a drawing so that I can get a report that lists all the shapes I've used and each shape's COST.   I can then add all these together for a Bill of Materials.

That part isn't too difficult as I can just assign a data cost to each shape I use.  My problem is this: The price I want to assign to each shape is related to the shape's Length and/or Width!   For Example each shape will represent a different material such as glass, aluminium, steel etc.   Now these materials are priced per square metre or per bar length and therefore I need a way of using the shape's dimensions so that it can be manipulated by a simple formula.   I can have a per metre bar price assignded to a shape but it's final price (the pice I need) would be the assigned price multiplied by the length of the bar i.e. how long I draw that particular bar.   

I hope you can see what I'm trying to acheive here?   Baically I want to be able to creat a drawing (a shop front for instance) from pre designed shapes that I have assigned price data to and then when the drawing is completed be able to generate a Bill of Materials.

This would be so fantastic if it is possible.  Does anyone if this IS possible and if so how would I go about it??

Any help greatly appreciated

Dan

[Jumpy]

You would have to manipulate the ShapeSheet.
There you create two user defined cells.
In one you write the price/m or price/m2. Name that cell for this example Uer.PPM or User.PPM2
In the second you write the formula you need, for example
=Width*User.PPM or =Width*Height*User.PPM2

Thats the basic principle. Depending on the scale of your drawing and the values in the width and height (m, mm, cm, in,..) you have to adjust the formula. Same is true with the geometry, if for example you have a circular shape....

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Instead of user defined cells you could ShapeDate cells just the same.

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With the report tool you can transport this to excel.

[dandino]

Thanks Jumpy,

Using a shapesheet sound a little technical as i'm quite new to visio.  Can I do this without using an external programing language such a C or Visual Basic? I don't realy want to get into that unless I have to.

Also can you or anyone expand on the "ShapeDate" method that you mentioned. I presume you ment "Shape Data". If that is what you ment then I can see a way to do what I wand because I don't think that you can define a Shape Data Field that automatically holds geometry data such as length and width let alone dynamically update that data as a user resizes the shape by draging for example.

If this can be done with shape date it would solve all my problems beacause as you say I could then access that data through the reports and export to excel !

Please if anyone can offer any help I wouls really appreciate it....

Thanks again

Dan

[Jumpy]

Using a shapesheet sound a little technical as i'm quite new to visio.  Can I do this without using an external programing language such a C or Visual Basic? I don't realy want to get into that unless I have to.

OK. From the start. To manipulate the ShapeSheet you don't need any programming language. Its a little bit like putting formulas in Excel cells, because the ShapeSheet is a alternate view of the shape. If you select a shape and then in the menu go to Window->Open ShapeSheet (or sth. like that, don't know the english Visio) a big table opens, that contains all infos about the shape in sections and cells. If you right click in the shapesheet area you can add new sections, like the "User" section, where you can place the above mentioned formulas in so called user defined cells. Or you can add the Shape Data section this way, to do the same. If you want to place formulas in the Shape Data, you have to use this way and can't use the User Interface, I think.

Also can you or anyone expand on the "ShapeDate" method that you mentioned. I presume you ment "Shape Data". If that is what you ment then I can see a way to do what I wand because I don't think that you can define a Shape Data Field that automatically holds geometry data such as length and width let alone dynamically update that data as a user resizes the shape by draging for example.

When you look at the shapesheet, there are formulas that hold width and height an so on already. U need only two new cells, either User.cells or Prop.cells (the later is the name of the ShapeData in the ShapeSheet), to hold your formulas/prizes.

Look at the ShapeSheet!!! That will make clearer many things I tried to explain, I think.

Jumpy

[dandino]

Thanks very very much Jumpy.

I will indeed look at the shapesheet.  If it is very much like working with formulas in Excel then I'm in luck because I'm very familiar with Ecel and have designed many spreadsheets.  It's always the same when you try something new, and visio is new to me, you have to find your bearings before you can do anything really useful.   I knew what I wanted was possible from just playing around with Visio - I could see it's potential but couldn't unleash it - so frustrating! 

Beleive it or not I've been using Publisher to do most of my estimating drawings and although it's sufficed so far its obviously limited.  I was alway on the look out for a more powerful but quite easy to use drawing program.  I tried AutoCad but the steep learning curve and the fact that it was overkill for my estimating need put me off it.  I'd knew about Visio but always thought it was more of a business graphics (flowcharting etc.) program so never bothered to try it.   How mistaken I was.    So glad I discovered it, and this forum!

Thanks again for all your help jumpy, I didn't even know I could open a "ShapeSheet" from the window menu, sounds very interesting!!!

Dan

[Jumpy]

OK. If you're hooked one final advise. You can put Visio in developer mode. That may be helpful, when you'll often delve in the ShapeSheet, because you than can Open the ShapeSheet with the context menu. You can activate that mode somewhere in the options, if I'm not mistaken. Also you can adjust in the options, if Visio shows one or more ShapeSheets at once. The later can be quite nice to copy formulas from one shape to another.