Tag: Content

Microsoft PowerBI w/Autodesk Fabrication

16 Mar 2019 Darren Young

For years, I’ve shared my Fabrication COD scripts with the industry. These can be used to examine database content using Excel.

Tyler Phillips of Bruner Corporation recently posted a nice article on LinkedIn about using Microsoft PowerBI. His PowerBI dashboard provides a great way to help visualize the data behind your Autodesk Fabrication content.

Simply put, the scripts I share dump property data to multiple CSV files. Tyler used that data for some of the PowerBI data sources. This allowed him to built a dashboard which helps him visualize and navigate the data in a more meaningful way. And better yet, he publish a fantastic article on LinkedIn that explains how to do it.

Microsoft PowerBI Dashboard of Autodesk Fabrication Content

This is a great example of leveraging data from multiple sources. PowerBI help you mash it together to give you meaningful information that’s simple to understand and navigate.

If you’ve ever struggled with ESTmep reporting, just think of the possibilities. By taking the above concept and using it across CSV exports from ESTmep you could easily overcome gaps in estimating reporting.

Great job Tyler! Really appreciate you sharing.

Additional Resources

Buying ITM Content

28 Jan 2019 Darren Young

If you use Revit’s Fabrication Parts, CADmep or any of the other Autodesk Fabrication products like ESTmep or CAMduct, you use ITM content. ITM files can be tricky and time consuming to build. If you don’t want to tackle it yourself or just done have time, I recommend Virtual Building Supply (https://itembuilders.com).

There are other companies that will build ITM content for you but their quality varies. Nibco as an example, is two companies removed from the firm that produces their content. As that firm has had some questionable business practices, I won’t get into detail other than to say I can tell just by looking at an ITM if they created it. If they did, I won’t use it.

There’s a few Autrodesk resellers as well who will build ITM content slightly cheaper but don’t put the quality or extra data associated with it into their work.

Virtual Building Supply on the other hand is run and operated by industry insiders. They’ve installed pipe. They’ve managed Autodesk Fabrication databases. They know their stuff.

If you browse to their downloads page, the have a few things you might be interested in…

PDF Catalog of Fabrication Patterns

IEZ Service Import File w/All Default Pattern Numbers

What Does COST TYPE do on ITM Content?

31 Dec 2018 Darren Young

When you build Autodesk Fabrication content, you may have noticed one of the properties “Cost Type“. You can see this setting is shown in the following image. 

If you do some searching online, you may run across an explanation for some but not all. As Autodesk explains in it’s online help….

  • Normal – Reads the Material, Fabrication, and Installation tables to generate costs of all materials, fabrication labor and installation labor.
  • Supply Only – Reads the Material and Fabrication tables to generate the same costs of material and fabrication but NOT installation. (You’d typically use this if you are fabricating for others outside your company.)
  • Free Issue – Reads only the Install table when calculating costs.

This leaves two remaining values that can be set. These are not documented by Autodesk. These two serve the same purpose…

  • Demolition – Used as a filter for Labor table value sets
  • Relocation – Used as a filter for Labor table value sets

Using these values would allow you to build a labor table for relocation that would include uninstall and reinstall time. You could also use the demolition value to build a labor table for removal only of an item. 

While you would think these only would apply to an install table, these filter values are also available for the fabrication table. At the very least, this opens up the possibility of using it in creative ways to serve whatever purpose you like.

Autodesk Fabrication: Best Practice #4

21 Dec 2017 Darren Young

Make sure ALL of your ITM content has a Database ID assigned to it.

A database ID is a unique identifier for content. There should be a single Database ID for any ITM that is NOT Product Listed. For Product Listed ITM’s, there should be Database ID for each entry in the product list.

For ITM’s that are not product listed (typically fabricated sheet metal fittings or other content where the ITM only represents one size, you can put the Database ID in the “Code” field of the ITM Properties as shown in the following image…

For ITM’s that are Product Listed, the Database ID should be in the ID column of the Product List. When you place an instance of a product listed ITM in your model, you select a size from the product list, When you select that size, the Database ID associated with that size it automatically entered into the Code field of the ITM Properties like shown earlier, The following image shows the Database ID column in a Product List…

Why Use A Database ID?

The Database ID is a useful component to managing an Autodesk Fabrication configuration. This Database ID can be referenced by other aspects of Autodesk Fabrication should you choose to use them. The Database ID is what can link your content to….

  • Price lists
  • Fabrication Labor
  • Installation Labor
  • Product Information (ProdInfo)

Even if you don’t use ESTmep for estimating  and don’t want to use the Price and/or Labor features of the database, Product Information is tied to the Database ID and is used to store additional meta data about your content like Manufacturer, Size, Description, etc. Even if you’re not using ProdInfo now, it’s still a good idea to use Database ID’s because adding them to the content is the most time consuming part. It’s easy to add them when building content, more cumbersome later after the fact. If all your content had Database ID’s assigned, it’s much easier to implement ProdInfo, Price and/or Labor later down the road.

The following Video shows how to access the Database ID of Product Listed and Non-Product Listed ITM’s. It also shows you 2 different sizes of a product listed ITM in a drawing and how Autodesk Fabrication automatically assigned the Database ID from the Product List for the corresponding size into the Code field of the ITM Properties.

Key Database ID Takeaways

Here’s a few pointers when working with Database ID’s:

  • Each Database ID should be unique and not assigned to other content or sizes.
  • Managing Database ID’s using a spreadsheet or other database makes managing them much easier.
  • Your database ID can be anything you want but should have some sort of naming standard associated with it.
  • Your Database ID Naming standard can be as simple as a prefix followed by incremental numbers to something complex with special codes and formatting to indicate other aspects of your content. (e.g. Valves, Pipe, Sheetmetal, etc)
  • You can use Autodesk or other Vendors ID’s if they already have them assigned and use your for anything you create or replace them all with your own company Database ID’s if you are particular about naming standards,
  • Don’t reuse ID’s if the content that once used them is now obsolete. Legacy/Archive drawings still reference these numbers. Simply flag them as being obsolete in the Spreadsheet you are managing them with.