MC2-ICE Integration with Prime Bid

Transcription

1 MC2-ICE Integration with Prime Bid The process of transferring costs from ICE to Prime Bid (integration) is based on exporting the information from an estimate (sections and costs) via custom Crystal Report to a Text file and then importing the Text file into Prime Bid. This process is not difficult, this document will help you work through the steps to transfer the data. In order to transfer sections, items and costs from ICE to Prime Bid, you must have the following items setup. 1. Crystal Report Writer v.11 must be setup inside of ICE to run the ICE data export report files. If you do not have the Crystal Report Writer setup call MC2 to set it up. 2. You must copy the two Crystal Report files from the Prime Bid installation folder (c:\program Files \Prime Bid\Import Templates) into a specific folder in the ICE setup (c:\program Files\MC2 Software \reports\crwnewrpts) The two files are named; ICE to Prime Bid Scope Item Detail XI TXT.rpt ICE to Prime Bid Summary XI TXT.rpt Note: You need Prime Bid /20/08 or later to have these files on your Prime Bid installation. 3. You must have ICE v3.1.8 or newer and Prime Bid /20/08 or newer installed on your computer. Note: It is not necessary to have both applications installed on the same machine, if you are using separate machines, then the created file from ICE is transferred to the machine that has Prime Bid installed. The following steps will process the estimate data from ICE to Prime Bid 1. Start ICE and open the estimate file that will have the estimate data exported to Prime Bid. Here is an example ICE estimate that will be transferred

2 2. Select the User Reports menu option from the Reports menu. This will bring up the custom user reports available in ICE. You need to have copied the supplied custom crystal reports into the correct directory as outlined above for the reports to show up in the drop down list selection. Select the ICE to Prime Bid Scope Item Detail XI TXT report or the ICE to Prime Bid Summary XI TXT report. The Scope Item Detail report will transfer the Major Sections list to Prime Bid and have each item, by cost category loaded into Prime Bid as scope items beneath the section. The Summary report will transfer only the Major Sections list to Prime Bid with a summary of the item costs by cost category. ***You must have the Primary Sort Sequence set to Major Item Code in the Print Window.***

3 3. After selecting the report, click the Print Report button. This will process the report and display the Crystal Report Viewer with the data from the estimate file displayed in a structured format. This report is not for printing, it is for data transfer. The results in the viewer look like this 4. Click the Export button on the toolbar, it is the left most button and looks like this This will prompt you to save the report in a specific file format. The following Export Window will display.

4 Drop down the Format: list and select the Text (TXT) format. After selecting the Text (TXT) format the Export Window will look like this. Click on the OK button to initiate the exporting of the report to a.txt file. An export to Text settings window displays. Always set the Number of Lines Per Page to 0. If this setting is not changed the text file will have invalid formatting. Save the File to your hard drive or to a network drive that can be accessed by Prime Bid. In this example, the file is being saved into the C:\Program Files\Prime Bid 7.0\Import Templates folder. Importing the details file into Prime Bid 5. Start Prime Bid and open a new file by selecting New from the File menu.

5 6. Click on the Import option from the File menu, the menu will cascade to the right and display options for MC2-ICE. Select the Summary option or the Section with Item Detail option based on which of the two reports that you selected. In this example the details report was selected. 7. The Import MC2-ICE Major Section with Item Detail Window displays

6 Browse for the created text file on your hard drive or from the network. 8. By clicking the Import button, you will start the import If the ICE file has alternates in it, you will be prompted to add the alternates to the Prime Bid file, otherwise the alternates will be ignored. After you decide about the alternates (if there are any) Prime Bid will import the data, and display an Import Results Window.

7 In this case all of the cost items in the estimate are now scope items in Prime Bid. To view the scope items worksheet for a section and a category cost, highlight the cell in the sections spreadsheet that you want to see the scope items for and right click in that cell. Select the Edit Scope Items worksheet menu option and the scope items worksheet will display. In this example the 5500 Metal Fabrications section and Materials cell was selected. When this section and category are selected to be added to a matrix, the scope items worksheet will be added to the matrix as well. Call Prime Software Support at if you have additional questions about the Importing of the data.