The Estimate Export feature allows you to create 2 different files, containing:
- The Project Header: in this file you can find a list of key-values related to the most important information of the project, such as customer name, address, phone, ..., project validity date, designer code, etc.. You can see an example of this file downloading the file attached to this article, named "71-Rossi Mario_header.txt"
- The list of materials used in the project. This is the real estimate file. You can see an example of this file downloading the file attached to this article, named "71-Rossi Mario.xls". This file can be saved also as a text file, rather than in the Excel format. Read this article to learn more
The name of the saved files is a concatenation of the project number (which is unique in the Application database, even in the Client-Server environment) and the customer name.
You can calculate the project estimate clicking the button Calculate, available in the Tools-Estimate section of the Ribbon, when you are in the Layout window; a quicker way to do that is also using the keyboard accelerator Ctrl+P. In the Estimate window of the Program, you can export the estimate with the command Export available in the Estimate-Estimate section of the Ribbon.
Usually this command asks you to specify the folder where you want to save estimate files.
There is an option, indeed, that allows you to save them automatically in a specific folder. Create a new Registry variable named "EstimateDefaultDir", containing a valid path for which you have read/write accees, and DomuS3D® will save the files in that folder.
With the Registry variable named "EstimateFileType" you can decide whether creating the estimate files in Excel vs Text format: the value of this key has to be 'XLS' for the Excel format, 'TXT' for the Text format. in lack of this variable, the default format is '.XLS'.
This option is useful for those who are using Account Systems that can ping a folder in order to automatically load new (pre-)orders; this option will make the import process in the Account system totally automatic.
There is one more option if you want to automatically load DomuS3D® estimate metadata in your Account/ERP/BI System. In fact, DomuS3D® can run an external application as soon as the 2 estimate files are available on disk. It will be the external application itself (developed by the Account Software Company) that takes care of loading the estimate information in the Account software. Maticad calls this companion application EstimateGenius.exe, and shares with customers an Open Source project (written in C#) that allows you to understand the way DomuS3D® passes the arguments to the application.
Do not forget that EstimateGenius is not ready for your specific purposes, but has to be completed depending on the Account System you are using.
DomuS3D® follows this procedure:
- a registry variable named "EstimateGeniusPath" will be inspected. If it exists, and contains the full path to an existing (and reachable) application, DomuS3D® launches that application passing the parameters that will allow it to identify the estimate files on disk. (in this case the application can be named as you want). Once the application has been launched, DomuS3D® exits from the Estimate Export command
- If the Registry variable "EstimateGeniusPath" does not exist (or does not refer to a valid application), DomuS3D® searches for EstimateGenius.exe application in the following folder: ...\DomuS3D\Estimate\EstimateGenius.exe
Using those options, you can make the estimate import process in your Account/CRM/ERP/BI System behaving the way you want.
If you are interested in this option, don't hesitate to ask your Maticad reference for the EstimateGenius.exe Open Source project.
Next image shows the process described in this article.
This article is valid for DomuS3D® 2018 and later versions