Typical groups

A building often repeats: 24 identical hotel rooms, 6 typical floors, 40 parking bays with the same striping. A typical group lets you take off one of them and count it as many times as it repeats, without drawing the copies.

Make a typical group

1. Take off one unit: its walls, its floor, its outlets — any items.
2. Select its marks with the Select tool: click one, then ⇧Shift + click the others (Select the marks).
3. Under Selected mark, open Typical and choose New typical group….
4. Give it a name (Unit A) and how many times it repeats (24), then choose Make group.

Every quantity of those marks now counts 24 times: a 10 ft wall run gives 240 ft, an 80 SF floor 1,920 SF, two outlets 48. Costs follow, and assembly formulas see the repeated totals (N counts each run 24 times too).

On the sheet, a dashed box goes round the group's marks with its name and count, like Unit A ×24.

Change it later

The groups are listed under Typical groups in the right panel:

• Change the number after × to change how many times it counts (1 to 10,000). Every quantity updates.
• Rename it in its name box.
• The box icon selects its marks (and shows their sheet).
• The bin deletes the group. Its marks stay, counted once.

To add marks to a group or take them out, select them and pick the group (or Not typical (×1)) under Typical.

Good to know

• A group's marks can be on several sheets, and of any items. Each mark is in one group at most.
• Copies you paste are not in the group: a pasted copy of a typical unit would otherwise count 24 times again. Use a group for "the same thing N times", and copy and paste for the copies you draw.
• The marks are drawn once, so the 3D view and the marked PDF show one unit; the quantities, the exports and the per-sheet table count it ×N. The Marks sheet of the Excel export says which marks are typical and how many times they count.
• With bid areas, a group's marks count ×N in their own bid area.