Room finishes takeoff: rooms, finishes and wall thickness from the model
A room finishes takeoff starts with room areas: flooring, ceilings and, in wet rooms, waterproofing all depend on them. In AiN Engine, the BOQ software I develop and work with, three tools that open from the bill of quantities window handle this: the Rooms sheet, the Wall Thickness table and the Calculation sheet. AiN builds the bill of quantities from the model, and these tools work right beside it. This page sets out what you see in each one, what it gives you and where the limits are.
Room finishes takeoff in AiN: what you see
- The Rooms sheet. A tab in the bill of quantities window. It lists the rooms with their areas, gives each room a drop-down of finishes, and classifies wet rooms.
- The Wall Thickness table. A window you open from the quantity approval flow of the bill of quantities. For each wall type it shows the thickness and where it came from: measured from the model, taken from the project table, or a starting value that has not been confirmed yet, which the interface calls a seed. There is a button to confirm a value for the project, and the window states plainly that until it is confirmed, the seed produces no quantity.
- The Calculation sheet. Another tab in the bill of quantities: a free table with formulas, units and totals. Quantities are built from length, width, depth and count, sum rows are marked in blue, and there is room for notes. The sheet can be exported to a file, and the download needs an active subscription.
All three tools are available in both the English and the Hebrew interface, as part of the project's bill of quantities.
What it gives you
I work as a quantity surveyor in Israel, and in finishes a wrong room area or an unchecked wall thickness carries into every quantity derived from it. That is why I want to see the basis before I look at the quantities.
For a room finishes takeoff, the first advantage is one place for the basics. The area of each room, the finish chosen for it and its wet-room classification sit in the same sheet, inside the project's bill of quantities. Room areas and the chosen finishes are the basis for the finish quantities, so it helps to see them together.
The second advantage is in wall thickness. The thickness of a wall drives the volume of the wall and everything derived from it, so a mistake there never stays on one line. In the Wall Thickness table, a starting value that has not been confirmed never feeds a quantity. A wall whose thickness nobody checked does not quietly produce a quantity that looks fine. Deciding that a thickness is right is a person's call, made with the confirm-for-project button.
The third advantage is that manual calculations stay inside the project. Whatever the model does not give you, such as an item that was not modelled or a dimension taken from a detail, is calculated in the Calculation sheet with a visible formula and a note, not in a side spreadsheet that nobody finds later. And in the bill of quantities itself, a missing value shows as missing, never as zero.
How to use it
This is how a room finishes takeoff runs for me in AiN:
- Open the bill of quantities window and go to the Rooms tab.
- Go through the room list and the areas. When the architect has an area table, I compare against it.
- Pick a finish for each room from the drop-down, and check which rooms are classified as wet rooms.
- During quantity approval, open the Wall Thickness table, check where each thickness came from, and confirm for the project only a thickness that has been checked.
- Calculate whatever does not come from the model in the Calculation tab, with a visible formula and a note on where each dimension came from.
Limits and notes
The Rooms sheet gives you the basis, not the method of measurement. How plaster, paint, tiling and waterproofing are measured, and what goes into each item, follows the measurement rules agreed for the project. Element quantities by category and level live in a different window, described on the Revit quantity takeoff page, and exporting the bill of quantities is covered on the export BOQ to Excel page.
In my own work, before I confirm a thickness for the project, I check it against the wall details in the architectural drawings. A starting value is a convenient place to begin, but it does not replace the detail. When something is unclear, the line stays open with a note rather than being closed on a guess.
What these tools do not do: they do not choose finishes for you and they do not invent thicknesses. A person picks the finish for each room, an unconfirmed thickness never enters a quantity, and the Calculation sheet is a manual calculation. In the bill of quantities every quantity carries a mark of its source, and a quantity entered by hand is marked as such.
Frequently asked questions
Does AiN choose the finish for each room?
No. The finish is chosen by hand from a drop-down next to each room. The software shows the area and the classification; the decision about which finish goes into the room belongs to whoever prepares the bill.
What happens to a wall whose thickness has not been confirmed?
In the Wall Thickness table it shows as a starting value that is not confirmed yet. Until someone confirms it for the project, that value does not enter any quantity.
How is the Calculation sheet different from a separate spreadsheet?
It is kept inside the project, next to the bill of quantities, rather than in a side file. It has formulas, units, sum rows and notes, and it can be exported to a file with an active subscription.
How do I compare AiN's quantities with what Revit reports?
There are separate comparison and proof sheets for that, described on the Revit schedules page. All the windows of the software are collected on the BOQ software page.
Want to see AiN on your own model? The AiN Engine site has the demo video, the pilot for one project and the login. For quantity surveying work in Israel, write to me through the form.
AiN Engine website Contact form* Created with AI for marketing, for illustration only. Not reviewed by Yaakov Avital and not professional advice. Every project must be checked on its own by a professional quantity surveyor and an engineer.