Surveying Effective Diameters

The Survey feature in ESTmep uses the Effective Diameters table from the Pattern Database to resolve differences between the nominal Diameters entered in Estimating and actual sizes entered in Manufacturing. The diagrams below illustrate how the Effective Diameters table affects the Surveying feature.

Job Contents Dialog of 'Base' Estimate

The base estimate contains 2 items of spiral tubes at 300mm and 500mm respectively.

Job Contents Dialog of 'Comparison' MAJ file

This file contains 5 items with a variety of actual fabrication diameters close to the nominal sizes held within the base estimate.

Standard Effective Diameters Table

In this default table, the effective diameter sizes have not been altered to trap the actual sizes that will be compared to the base estimate.

Example Survey Dialog 1

As the effective diameter table has not been adjusted to trap similar sizes, the items in the comparison file are not matched to those in the base Estimate. Hence, the calculated rate for those items do not match up. This can clearly be seen in the Survey dialog image above and Job Contents dialog below.

Job Contents Listing for Survey 1

Adjusted Effective Diameters Table

For the second example, the settings for the 300 and 500 diameter entries have been adjusted to trap the actual sizes that have been entered in the comparison file.

Note: The software uses exact matching to pick up the range of sizes to group to a particular nominal diameter and not a range check. While this restricts the number of available diameters to be matched to 6, this should be sufficient.

It is important to use the same effective diameter table throughout, and note that the Effective Diameters option should be off (not selected) in the Database Pattern Switches Develpments tab.

Example Survey Dialog 2

Using the 'adjusted' effective diameter table, the items in the comparison file are matched to those in the base Estimate. Hence, the calculated rate for those items does match up. This can clearly be seen in the Survey dialog image above and Job Contents listing shown below.

Job Contents Listing for Survey 1

The 298 and 301 entries have been matched and converted to the 300mm item in the base estimate.

The 498, 502 and 503 entries have all been converted to the 500mm item in the base estimate.