Importing Timberline Estimating into Prime Bid

Transcription

1 Importing Timberline Estimating into Prime Bid This is a four part process I. Prepare the Prime Bid Export Spreadsheet Layout II. Export the Phase Information to an.xls file & convert to.csv File III. Prepare the Prime Bid Import Template IV. Import the.csv File Preparing the Prime Bid Export Spreadsheet Layout 1. Create a new spreadsheet layout in Timberline Estimating by; Clicking on the spreadsheet layout button on the toolbar The Spreadsheet Layouts window appears, Click the Add button to create a new layout. 1

2 Name the Spreadsheet Layout, Prime Bid Export, then click the Use for new estimates check box. If you do not check the Use for new estimates box, then the new tab for this layout will not automatically display for use when you start a new estimate. Now Uncheck all of the columns except for the following; Phase Description Labor Amount Material Amount Sub Amount Equip Amount Other Amount The result will look as below: (Hint: you can use the arrow down key and Space bar to remove or add checks for the rows.) Choose one of the editable (sequence) tabs for the spreadsheet to alter the sequence to sort only by the Phase. This means that there will be no Group Phase sort or any other sort. Also this means that there will be no item level of detail displaying. Now rename the sequence to Prime Bid Export. Remove the current sort elements from the sequence and place only the Phase in the sequence by selecting it from the list. It will now look like this; 2

3 Now you can run the spreadsheet layout and it will look as below: 2. Export the Phase Information to an Excel.xls file then save as.csv File. While you are on the Prime Bid Export layout that looks like the screen shot above, select Spreadsheet from the Reports menu. The first time you do this, select the report options button, select the Prefill from Spreadsheet button, and then unselect the Print vertical gridlines and the Print horizontal gridlines options, on the sort tab, unselect the Page Break between Phase. There can be no printing options checked. If some printing options are checked the data will have problems. 3

4 Now click the Export button to create the.xls file. In the Save as Type drop down list the default is Text Files (*.txt), drop down the list and select Microsoft Excel Workbook,.xls 4

5 Now save the file by naming it Timberline Demo Export or whatever you like. The.xls extension will automatically be used with the file name. Wherever you save the file to on your hard drive or on your network, this is where you will go to import the file in Prime Bid. Now open that Excel file that you just created and save it as a.csv file. (Timberline Estimating as of 9x, allows just the columns that you want, to be exported into Excel with the Prefill feature from Spreadsheet Reports. Timberline Estimating does not allow you to retain columns with the.csv file export. We then need to save to a.csv file, which is the file format that Prime Bid accepts.) Say Yes if when you save, it asks you if you want to keep the same format. 3. Prepare the Prime Bid Import Template First start Prime Bid Select New from the File Menu Select Import Templates from the Edit Menu Select the Edit Existing Template button Find the Timberline Summary import template (.bit) from the Import Templates folder located beneath the Prime Bid folder from where you installed Prime Bid. Typically the default location is C: \Program Files\Prime Bid\Import Templates. Save your import template file changes if necessary. 5

6 4. Import the.csv File First edit the decimal places for the phases based upon the number of decimals that are in your estimating phase codes. In this example there are three decimal places. To do this 1. Select the Sections option from the Preferences option from the Tools menu. Change the decimal places to your selection, in our example we will change it to three. 6

7 Click the OK button. Now you are ready to import the.csv file from estimating. Select Import from the File Menu. 7

8 Browse for the file to be imported Prime Bid Demo export and browse for the import template Timberline Summary. During the first browse, you can change the Files of Type to All Files (*.*) You do not need to set any of the other options in the Window 8

9 Now click the Import button 9