# Program to calculate lumber take-offs?



## cer308 (Mar 7, 2006)

I am starting with my grandfather's General Contacting firm on May 1st in preparation for assuming total control of the business upon his retirement in 2-3 years. We recently placed a bid to do the framing on a 20,000sq. ft. house, which will be the largest house ever built in our county. He has said that he is going to put me in charge of day-to-day operations framing this house. He has always done lumber take-offs by hand. He knows I am very proficient with a computer and told me to find a program that will accurately do lumber take-offs for this project and ones in the future, seeing has how the average take-off he does takes around 3 hours. We do not frame/build anything smaller than 6000sq. ft. This project will make or break my name in my home town, but I will give it my all and I know I can "knock this one out of the park" as he says. Cost is not really an issue, I just need something to do the job accurately and in a somehat user-freindly manner.

First post, many more to come,
Trey


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## hatchet (Oct 27, 2003)

This may be removed by Nathan - but http://www.construction-resource.com/calculators/stud-wall.php is one that I wrote for interior and exterior stud walls - I have it working for excel also. Or are you looking for something like a tablet and pen digitizer?


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## cer308 (Mar 7, 2006)

I need something that is pretty detailed that is also a pretty mainstream product, that will have customer support and is very adpative.


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## cer308 (Mar 7, 2006)

Anyone?


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## hatchet (Oct 27, 2003)

http://www.quickframesystems.com/
http://www.turtlesoft.com/framing.html


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## ProWallGuy (Oct 17, 2003)

Google is your friend.

http://www.eolnow.com/
http://www.comprotexsoftware.com/lumber.htm
http://www.cscsoftware.com/
http://www.contractorszone.com/Links/estimating_systems.html


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## cer308 (Mar 7, 2006)

Yeah I looked at most of those on Google. Which one is the best in your opinion?


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