20_Turn Your Takeoff into a Bill of Materials: Building Views and Exporting BOMs from the Quantities Tab (11:25)

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Overview

Everything you build in a project ends up in the Quantities tab: assemblies, connections, wire, and the parts inside each assembly. It is where your output comes from, whether that is a BOM for procurement or an installation package for the field. This video walks through the table itself, then shows how to group and trim columns, save the layout as a template, change wire sizes one object at a time or in bulk, export the table, and open the Material BOM. It is for anyone who turns a takeoff into an order or a release.

What you'll learn

Where to find the Quantities tab and give the table more screen space
How to group rows by dragging a column header above the table
How to choose the columns you need in the Columns browser
How to save a table layout with Select a Template and apply it on any project
What the Assembly BOM, Wire BOM, and Material BOM each contain
How to change a wire size on one object and use Bulk Edit on a filtered view
How to export the active table to XLSX or CSV

Before You Begin

Place your assemblies and draw your connections before opening the Quantities tab. The tables use the data already in your project. Connection details you selected while drawing, such as a home run or EMT, are stored with each run and appear as columns in the Wire BOM.

The table initially displays many columns. After choosing the columns you need, save the layout as a template to reuse it across projects.

Part 1 — Open the Quantities Tab and Make Room

Open a sheet in your project.
On the left-hand panel, click Quantities, near the center of the panel. The table opens next to the floor plan.
Click the black divider bar between the floor plan and the table.
Drag the bar to the right to give the table more room.
If you work on more than one monitor, click Open in New Tab to open the BOM full screen in its own browser tab.
Pick the column you want to group by, such as Sheet Name.
Drag that column header to the area above the table. The rows group under each sheet name.
To divide the rows further, drag a second column header, such as Scope Box, next to the first.
Click the menu button on any column header. Every header opens the same menu.
In the submenu, click Columns. The column browser lists every available column.
Clear every column.
Add back the columns you need. The video uses:
- Item, to identify the item
- Scope Box, to identify its location
- Assembly Code, for prefab building
- Label, for the label on the assembly
- Sheet Name and Sheet Number, which are always filled in
- Quantity, for counts
Add System if you need it in this table.
Drag the column headers into the order that works best for you, for example quantity, label, assembly code, then location.
At the top of the table, click Select a Template.
Type a name for the view, for example Training Template.
Click the green check box to save it.
Open the Quantities tab on any project.
Click Select a Template.
Scroll to your template.
Click Apply. The table switches to your saved columns and order.
Click Wire BOM.
Reset the view to clear any filter left from earlier work.
Choose your columns as described in Part 3, this time with connections in mind.
Check the Feed From and Feed To columns. These labels come from your sheet annotation tags.
Scroll right to the wire size description column to see the wire size assigned to each run.
Filter the Wire BOM to that object. The video uses object 2R355.
In the wire size column, change the size. The video uses 8 gauge.
Click Save at the bottom of the table to save the new wire size.
To clear the filter, find the active filter in the column headers and remove it.
Remove any grouping from above the table.
Open the filter on the Connection Type column.
Filter to MC cable.
Click Bulk Edit.
Enter the change, such as a new wire gauge to upsize or downsize, a budget, or an install time.
Click Apply. The change is made to every row in the current view.
Open the BOM you want to export.
Set the filters and columns so the table shows what you want in the file.
Click Export at the bottom of the table.
Click Export Active Table.
Choose XLSX or CSV. AECinspire creates the file.
Open the Material BOM one of two ways:
- Click Material BOM.
- Click Next in the bottom right corner of the table.
Reset the view if a filter is still applied.
Review the component list: the subcomponents that make up your assemblies, listed once each.
Build a view for the release you need, such as one sheet or one scope box for procurement.
Switch to the overall wire view to see wire broken down by conductor type and conductor size, with full lengths for the whole project.
Export with XLSX or CSV, as described in Part 9.

Best practice: On a multi-monitor setup, keep the floor plan on one screen and the BOM full screen on the other with Open in New Tab.

Part 2 — Group Rows by Column

Note: You can group by more than one column at a time, for example by sheet and then by scope box.

Part 3 — Choose Your Columns with the Column Browser

The table has upper-30s worth of columns, and many of them will be blank for the work you are doing. Build the table up from nothing instead of hiding columns one at a time.

The available columns fall into these groups:

Column group	Examples named in the video
Identification and location	Item, System, Scope Box, Sheet Name, Sheet Number, Label, Assembly Code
Counts	Quantity
Labor and cost	Budget time, installation difficulty, labor rates, labor factor
Prefab	Prefab numbers and their calculations

Best practice: A working bill of material may need only six or seven columns. Add a column when it provides information you need for the task.

Part 4 — Save the View as a Template

The template saves to your user profile, so it is available on every project you open.

To apply a saved template:

Best practice: Create templates for the views you use most. Refine them as you work through your first few projects.

Part 5 — Know the Three BOMs

BOM	What it holds
Assembly BOM	Every assembly placed on the project, listed as one object each, including duplexes and other devices, equipment, in-wall, and overhead
Wire BOM	Every cable and conductor, with the connection details you set while drawing (home run, EMT, and so on), Feed From / Feed To, and wire size description
Material BOM	A distinct list of the loose parts and subcomponents that make up your assemblies, plus overall wire broken down by conductor type and size

Note: Filters and view changes save as you work. When you return to a table, it retains your previous view, including any filters. Reset the view to see the whole table.

Part 6 — Read the Wire BOM

How runs appear in the Wire BOM:

Run type	How it is listed
Wire in conduit	Each conductor on its own row
MC cable	Segments broken out by MC cable color, with the cable size (for example 12/2 or 12/3)

Note: The Feed From and Feed To values in an exported table use the same sheet annotation tags as the installation drawing, so readers can match the tags between the two.

Part 7 — Change the Wire Size on One Object

Use this procedure when one load needs a different conductor, such as a stove or a washer/dryer.

Part 8 — Bulk Edit a Filtered View

Bulk Edit changes every row in the current view, so set your filters first.

Note: Bulk Edit on any table affects everything in the current view. Check your filters before you click Apply.

Best practice: Save a filtered view you use often as a template (Part 4). For another way to change many objects at once, see article 20, Bulk Editing with Select Similar.

Part 9 — Export the Active Table

The exported file is an exact copy of the table as displayed in AECinspire.

Format	When to use it
XLSX	Most exports; the format recommended in the video
CSV	When importing the data into another tool that works better with CSV

Note: The buttons at the bottom of the table also include map code and a sync option the narrator calls "Tracked It sync." This video does not cover those options; later videos cover the other exports.

Part 10 — Open the Material BOM

Best practice: Use the overall wire report to inform your wire ordering decision for the project.

Quick Reference

What you need	Where to find it
Quantities tab	Left-hand panel, near the center
More room for the table	Drag the black divider bar between the floor plan and the table to the right
Full-screen BOM	Open in New Tab
Group rows	Drag a column header to the area above the table
Show or hide columns	Menu button on any column header → Columns
Save a table layout	Select a Template at the top of the table → name → green check box
Apply a saved layout	Select a Template → pick the template → Apply
Where templates are stored	Your user profile; available on every project
Assemblies placed on the project	Assembly BOM
Cables, conductors, connection details	Wire BOM
Loose parts and overall wire lengths	Material BOM, or Next in the bottom right corner
Feed From / Feed To labels	Driven by sheet annotation tags
Change one wire size	Filter to the object → edit wire size → Save at the bottom
Change every row in a view	Set filters → Bulk Edit → Apply
Export a table	Export at the bottom → Export Active Table → XLSX or CSV
Recommended export format	XLSX

Troubleshooting

Issue	Resolution
The table is cramped next to the floor plan	Drag the black divider bar to the right, or click Open in New Tab.
Too many blank columns	Open Columns from any column header menu, clear everything, and add back only the columns you need.
The table opens with a filter you do not remember setting	Filters save as you work. Reset the view or remove the filter from the column header.
You rebuild the same columns on every project	Save the view with Select a Template. It saves to your profile and applies on any project.
Bulk Edit changed more rows than expected	Bulk Edit applies to every row in the current view. Check your filters and grouping before clicking Apply.
A wire size change did not stick	Click Save at the bottom of the table after editing the size.
Feed From / Feed To values do not match what you expected	These come from the sheet annotation tags. Correct the tag on the sheet.
A wire in conduit shows several rows	Expected. Each conductor in conduit is listed on its own row.

Next Steps

Later videos cover the other export options in more depth. The recording does not identify the next video.

Timestamped Transcript

[00:00:05] In this training, let's dive into the Quantities tab. All of the work you've done so far ends up in that Quantities tab, and that's where all of your output comes from — not just printing the sheet, but creating those BOMs and creating the installation packages. So let's do an overview of the Quantities tab.

[00:00:22] The Quantities tab is located on the left-hand panel near the center. When you open that up, it's going to show you a smaller view of this Quantities tab, and there's a lot going on here, so we'll dive into that. But what I always like to do is grab this center bar — this black bar that divides out the floor plan from the table — and just click and drag that out to the right for a little bit more real estate.

[00:00:47] Those of you that are working in a multi-monitor setup, you can hit Open in New Tab, and that makes your BOM full screen for easier table viewing and more real estate to look at. From here, we'll close that out and go back to the normal quantity view.

[00:01:02] When you first open Quantities, there's a lot going on here, so don't feel overwhelmed. It gets really easy, really quick. This table has a ton of power. First off, you can reorganize the columns as you need to, and there are ways to group as well, when you drag a column header up to the top.

[00:01:24] In this case, let's head over to the sheet name or sheet number. What we can do is drag Sheet Name up above, and it groups everything together. Now, I'm not getting specific with this BOM; this is just general functionality. You can group multiple items together as well. If we wanted to do scope boxes next and divide out this floor plan even further, we can add scope boxes in.

[00:01:50] As you see, there's a ton of columns here. So how do we make sense of this, and how can we make this easier? That's what we're going to dive into next. With the groupings, there's still a lot of fluff — there's a lot of blank cells in here that we might not even use.

[00:02:02] To clean those up, you'll want to head to the menu button on any of the column headers. It doesn't matter which one you click into; they all end up in this column browser. In the submenu that just popped up, we're going to click the Columns button. This is a spot where it's going to list out all the columns that are available, which I think we're up in the upper 30s of column availability.

[00:02:28] How I like to think about building a table is: let's nix out everything and use the additive approach. Let's start answering questions. First, we know we want the item — what are we pulling through? If System is important, we can bring that in, but in this case we'll omit that. We know that we're going to be working with scope boxes. We know we're going to be needing the assembly code for prefab building, and we're also going to bring in the Label field to see what label we have in place for that assembly itself.

[00:02:59] You can realistically bring in any specific column that you need to. I was bringing Sheet Name and Sheet Number just to have those in there, because those are always filled in. But now we can bring our quantities for counts. The rest of the fields down below are going to be your budget time, your installation difficulty, your labor rates, your labor factor, the prefab numbers, and all of those calculations.

[00:03:22] Your general bill of material that you're working with doesn't have to be complex. It can be as simple as just the six or seven columns that we just added. Now what we can do is reorganize these, so you can drag the columns in any order that makes the most sense to you. We can drag this over and drag Label right next to that, so we can see the quantity, what it is there, the label, what that is, the assembly code, and then we get into where it lives.

[00:03:53] And you're saying to yourself, "Do I have to do this on every single project?" The answer is absolutely not. Your first couple of projects are really going to be getting your feet underneath you for what different views you need. And this is a default template that you can set in place to save this view, so when you jump into any existing project or any other new project, you're able to get to this view really quickly.

[00:04:18] At the top of the table, we hit Select a Template, and from there you can just give it a name. We'll call this one "Training Template." We give it the name, we hit that green check box, and this is going to save to your profile, so this follows around every project that you work on.

[00:04:39] Let's head down, and we see Training Template 1, and that's the view we have active. But let's run a scenario. We just jumped into a project. We have all of these columns — we have all that information back that we don't necessarily need to get the job done at the time. So we're going to Select a Template, scroll all the way down to that template that we just created, and hit Apply. It instantly zaps to that same structure, so you're working with the same view, making the same decisions.

[00:05:05] Now, it's just one option within the table. I really recommend everyone jumps in and creates templates. But more on the BOMs themselves. You have an Assembly BOM, which we're looking at right now, where you're seeing all of your duplexes — all the devices that you have placed on this project. It could be equipment, it could be in-wall, it could be overhead; all of the above is captured as the assembly object itself.

[00:05:31] Next to that, we have our Wire BOM. In the Wire BOM, you're going to see all of the cables. Right now I actually have a filter on from earlier, so filters do save as you're creating those views and modifying work in the project. When you jump in, it brings you right back to where you left off. But let's reset this view so we can get a good breadth of everything that's in this table.

[00:05:52] This table is going to contain all of your connection details. When you made that selection of, "Hey, this is a home run; hey, it's EMT," all of that is embedded data that you can make active now. Again, this table has a ton of information, so I recommend running that same exercise we did with the Assembly BOM — just think about it towards connections.

[00:06:13] You're seeing everything from the Feed From to the Feed To with the sheet annotation labeling. That's also something to know: when you see Feed From and Feed To, those labels are driven from your sheet annotation tag. So whenever you do export, it's going to be a one-to-one for someone looking at that drawing and looking at that spreadsheet or that installation document with those tags on there. Those two connected are very powerful.

[00:06:36] Moving on from there, we head to the right, and again, we're going to see Sheet Name, Sheet Number — all those general details. The one thing I want to note is you do have an opportunity to see all the links in here as well. Again, you can reorder this, but we have our wire size description: what is that wire size we assigned to it? Anything that is in conduit will be listed as an individual conductor on this table.

[00:07:03] As we see scrolling down into the MC cable, we have different segments broken out by color of MC cable, and it's telling us 12/2, 12/3, depending on whatever size it is. This is also a table where you can make wire size adjustments. If we know that a specific object — say a stove or washer/dryer — that's something that you can filter on.

[00:07:28] An example of that would be: we're on Feed To, and we need to filter to a specific object. We can click that one object — in this case, we're just going to randomly pick this 2R355 — and we come across and we say, "Hey, that is now going to be an 8 gauge run." So we have that wire size saved. Hit the Save button at the bottom, and now that wire size is locked in.

[00:07:54] Let's reset this — take that filter back off of here. Just head across the top until you see that filter, and we'll bring everything back in. On this table as well, if we wanted to isolate items to all of the MC cable, for example — I'm going to take that grouping off the top, head over to Connection Type, and put a filter on this for MC cable.

[00:08:21] If I wanted to make an adjustment to all of the MC cable — say wire gauge, or downsize it or upsize it — when I have this view set and the filters applied, everything that's in this view can be edited with the Bulk Edit button. So you're not having to go line by line. We can simply make an adjustment, add a budget in there, add install time in there, hit Apply, and it makes that adjustment to everything that's visible in the table.

[00:08:48] Anytime you see a Bulk Edit with a table, when you hit that button, it's going to be affecting everything that's in that view. And again, we can also save a view as a template, which I highly recommend that everybody does.

[00:09:01] Now, bouncing back to the Assembly BOM as a part of this tour, we're going to look at the exports. Down at the bottom we have a couple of buttons. We don't get into the map code on this one or the Tracked It sync [unclear in recording], but we have our Export button.

[00:09:19] For example, if we wanted to export this table as we see it — we have everything filtered and we want to export this into Excel — you go to Export Active Table, and you want to choose CSV or Excel. XLSX is going to be your most common export, unless you're pulling this in for use in another tool or a CSV works better. We always recommend that XLSX. As soon as I click that button, it creates that file for me.

[00:09:49] Now I can drag this in, and as you see, it's an exact replica of the table that we have inside of Inspire. There's a lot of power with just this one export, and we'll dive into the other exports in future videos. I don't want to grab everything in this one video.

[00:10:06] Moving on, the other portion of this BOM is our Material BOM. There are two different ways to get there. First, you can simply select Material BOM, and it brings you right to the materials. Let me give this one a quick reset. It's going to give you loose parts — all of those subcomponents that make up those assemblies — and gives you that distinct list.

[00:10:28] Again, this is a spot where you can get specific by creating a view for each sheet, by scope box, whatever that release looks like for procurement or if you need to build a BOM. This is your spot for all that loose component work. And again, this has another export with a CSV or an XLSX.

[00:10:45] Now, the other way to get in here is the Next button on the bottom right corner. This one's a little bit more discreet. Either way works to get into that Material BOM. On the Material BOM side, again, you have your component BOM, but you can also get your wire overall as well. We can have this broken down by conductor type and conductor size, and you can get a full length report on everything in your project to help you make that ordering decision.

[00:11:14] Now, this is just an overview with a couple of examples of what you can do, and in the next videos we'll dive a little bit deeper into what some possibilities are and what the other exports look like.