[UPDATED OCT 2021] Quantifier - Potentially serious issue relating to take offs/deductions from wall

Extensions
1

New and existing readers of this post should be made aware that a beta version fixing the issue below has been released. I’ve tested it and it now works as hoped. The team over at Mind Sight Studios have done an excellent job with doing, what must have been an involved revision to the coding. My hats off to you for addressing this issue, early testing has shown that it’s usable for real world use. That is, where someone in the construction project, changes there mind about wall or roof openings. Well done and my hat off to you!

The following includes my disappointment in a tool that ORIGINALLY did not work well for the advertised use case. This is now completely retracted as a result of the proactive work by the developers.

Like many, I’m very keen to see if my drawing work can be used as much as possible, so I investigated Profile Builder 3 and consequently Quantifier Pro (made by the same company). I was very keen to be able to create estimates for actual building work.

I spent many an hour understanding the principles of Profile Builder 3, I then spent many more understanding Quantifier Pro.

Familiar with both, I then went to use it on a live project and immediately came across a serious fault with Quantifier Pro, that does not make it a feasible package for real life use.

I hope the video below helps to understand this issue, but in summary, when you build a wall from Profile builder, then use Quantifier Pro to associate costs, all works well. Unfortunately, when you use the built in “hole” tool to make openings (known as deductibles in construction), Quantifier Pro does not notice this change.

Possible issue with Quantifier Pro for SketchUp - YouTube

This issue was noticed by a user and addressed by the developers in 2019 (2 years ago):

Quantifier-pro-comment-
Quantifier-pro-comment-854×739 86.9 KB

Please understand, I do encourage anything that helps save time, but an issue like this can’t be ignored. I appreciate the low cost when compared to the professional suites, but there’s little point in its’ existence if it can’t do necessary things with tools that are built within that package.

Anyway, I’m not at all saying that I know these things for a fact and I do welcome any comments. Perhaps I have a bad install.

2

@Whaat may be able to describe here the current status regarding this point.

1 Like
3

Thank you, I very much welcome dialogue or an update on what appears to be a historical issue, especially if it doesn’t involve workarounds.

4

Firstly, regarding the adverts on YouTube, this is a complete surprise to me and should not be happening. Can you please provide the link to the video you saw on our mind.sight.studios channel that has adverts? Perhaps the video got incorrectly flagged for copyright violation and YT is forcing ads. This is definitely not our intent to advertise on our training videos!

Secondly, the problem with holes in Quantifier Pro is highly complex. There is a solution provided here, although I understand the solution may not be ideal for everyone:

We do still hope to improve this in a future update, and I am sorry that it has taken so long for this to be improved.

For rectangular prismatic walls and simple rectangular holes, it does not seem so complex a problem…but when you consider that Profile Builder is designed to support any shape of profile, any shape of hole with any orientation, I hope you can understand why this is not a simple fix for us.

Over the years, we have noticed that that Profile Builder is being used extensively by our users to create simple walls. We did not know this would be the case when we designed the plugin. We thought it would be used more to model elements such as lumber, steel members, and other objects where it is not very important to account for the reduction in area from holes. Now that we know that it is used so much for walls, I agree that we need to make these types of fixes a higher priority.

I appreciate your interest in our products and willingness to put in the effort to learn them in detail.

4 Likes
5

New and existing readers of this post should be made aware that a beta version fixing the issue below has been released. I’ve tested it and it now works as hoped. The team over at Mind Sight Studios have done an excellent job with doing, what must have been an involved revision to the coding. My hats off to you for addressing this issue, early testing has shown that it’s usable for real world use. That is, where someone in the construction project, changes there mind about wall or roof openings. Well done and my hat off to you!

The following includes my disappointment in a tool that ORIGINALLY did not work well for the advertised use case. This is now completely retracted as a result of the proactive work by the developers.

Hi Dale,

Thank you for responding so promptly, very much appreciated.

Here is a link to the mind sight studios YouTube video

Quantifier Pro Getting Started - YouTube

and here is a screenshot of the advertisement

Screenshot 2021-08-23 16.45.41
Screenshot 2021-08-23 16.45.411581×1440 137 KB

Having had experience with forms of coding I do sympathise with the complexities you’ve no doubt been thoroughly investigating during the past few years. That said, I hope you can appreciate the perspective of someone that hasn’t been involved in the behind the scenes work and the effort you’ve clearly faced and overcome. That said, it must be understood that if you show videos and create tutorials on the creation of masonry walls using Profile Builder, people might actually use this tool to make masonry walls. From that, people might even notice that you provide the Quantifier and merely assume that construction made from Profile Builder, will work well with Quantifier? It’s like if you buy a brand new car from a company and they offer you an upgraded music player. When you install it and it doesn’t work, they say, “Oh, you didn’t think it would be compatible just because we made the car, it did you?”.

I do see your view point with regard to how you saw the tool being used, I suppose this is one (perhaps, only) situation where having analytics would help. I think though, most users that are disappointed by this significant oversight would just stop using the tool and move on.

I think ultimately, seeing YT creators demonstrate how superb your plugins are in isolation, but never showing them work together, is very misleading and needs to be addressed. I wouldn’t blink twice paying twice as much if this tool worked as advertised and demonstrated. I know I’m harping on about this, but having spent 6 hours learning the tool, then trying to apply it, then finding the issues/workarounds with it (“Improving Accuracy” is a distorted description of the issue), then be in communication with you…well, it’s time I would have preferred to spend earning money or being with my family & friends. What was an investment in time quickly turned into a disappointing loss, that leaves a bad taste in ones’ mouth.

I do sincerely wish you luck with the improvements and you certainly have my support, being able to use one model that’s pretty for the client and cost accurate for the builder, would be ideal from anyone’s perspective. I am a smaller player in construction and only design and assist with around £25,000,000 / $34,000,000 worth of construction, but if your system was used by slightly larger players, you could jack the price right up. Of course the bigger boys use Revit and the like, so you won’t likely be able to stretch that far (SketchUp doesn’t like big files and comparatively it’s not that accurate/reliable).

Incidentally, I would far prefer dialogue like this occurs less publicly, I know that if I did my job in a less than satisfactory way, I would prefer a quiet word as opposed to shouting my complaints in a public space. Feel free to message me when you’ve made improvements, we’ve gotten this far after all.

FYI, I glanced at another video of yours on YT

Screenshot 2021-08-23 16.52.26
Screenshot 2021-08-23 16.52.261581×1440 115 KB

6

I need some time to digest your message and I agree we can take this conversation outside the forum going forward.

But regarding the YT adverts, I am really upset with YT over this. Quick research indicates that creators located outside the US (like myself and PlusSpec) are now getting ads forced into their videos with zero compensation!

I need to do some more research to get the whole story but here is a link that explains some of this:

7

Time to post on Rumble or Vimeo , … etc. …

8

Thanks for expressing your concern in detail and the impact it has had on your work. I agree, we need to put a higher priority on improving the way Profile Builder and Quantifier Pro work together with respect to accounting for openings and holes. I cannot promise when we will be able to address this issue but we will definitely be looking at this in detail soon.

I’m thinking of maybe having a setting in Quantifier Pro to toggle whether holes are deducted from rectangular profiles (it could be enabled by default). If we could achieve this feature, it would solve the problem for anyone who is using PB / QP to quantify walls with openings. Plus, it could be disabled for people who don’t wish to deduct for the holes (eg. structural elements such as dimensional lumber or heavy timber).

Constraining the feature to work only for rectangular profiles would make the implementation / coding significantly easier for us (but still quite challenging in certain situations)

If you want to get notified when we release this update, please be sure to sign up here:
https://confirmsubscription.com/h/j/67F331C25E631378

1 Like
9

You’re welcome, I hope it positively helps towards your product, as it’s so close to being incredibly helpful for the people that physically build.

A toggle switch for holes deducted/not deducted would be excellent, so long as it also includes ‘hole by profile’ (made with Profile Builder and currently an option).

I do appreciate it is a challenge and you’ve achieved a great deal so far, but by pushing your personal limits a little more, would create a genuine ‘go to’ plugin. At the moment, it seems too much effort for the SketchUp team to code, so I would hope your efforts would be safe.

Incidentally, here’s another little anomaly that occurs when using the hole tool, that you should perhaps be aware of (duplicate holes on parallel profiles). - NOTE: THIS HAS BEEN RESOLVED BY @mihai.s COMMENT BELOW.

I will certainly sign up to your notification list, thank you.

10

Uncheck ‘Full Depth’ and Set the Limit you want (min 8:25)

1 Like
11

That is so strange, I’m sure I tried that tool and it didn’t work, I tried it again and it worked. Thank you for suggesting it.

1 Like
12

It is due to google profiling users based on browser history, and there isn’t anything we can do about it really as the service is free and it’s in the T&Cs. These days you have to pay to play, which makes it harder to be a small business.

Regardless we push on; the only fair way to beat the advertisers is to be better, so let’s not cry over spilt milk and make better plugins for our industry.

2 Likes
13

Just a significant update, which I’ve copied and pasted throughout this thread to ensure it’s clear how this tool has become far more usable:

New and existing readers of this post should be made aware that a beta version fixing the issue below has been released. I’ve tested it and it now works as hoped. The team over at Mind Sight Studios have done an excellent job with doing, what must have been an involved revision to the coding. My hats off to you for addressing this issue, early testing has shown that it’s usable for real world use. That is, where someone in the construction project, changes there mind about wall or roof openings. Well done to you all!

The following includes my disappointment in a tool that ORIGINALLY did not work well for the advertised use case. This is now completely retracted as a result of the proactive work by the developers.

2 Likes
14

Thank you for posting the update to this thread.

I encourage all who are interested in Quantifier Pro to test out the new 1.2 beta version. It is a free update and only requires that you have either a free trial or paid license. You can get it here. We are especially anxious to know whether the new XSLX export / import features are working well for Mac users.

2 Likes
15

I like the division conversion thingy a lot.
I wish I could decide whether or not to subtract holes when running a layer report on square footage. This would be helpful with calculating drywall since it ends up being easier to call the “waste” whatever gets cut out on the job.

I wish that quantities of materials were rounded up in reports. I can’t buy half a brick at Lowe’s.
-I don’t want to have to learn Excel :frowning:-

Edit: To clarify, I wish I didn’t have to use excel to round up.

1 Like
16

The round-up function isn’t so important when it comes to the quantity, as much as the price.