Buildsoft Electronic Newsletter December 2006
  • Staff Profile: Scott Mannow
  • Designbuild 2006 Trade Show
  • MYOB Accounting Link
  • New International Distributor
  • New Australian Distributor
  • New version of BTOS
    		•
  • Christmas Close Down at Buildsoft
  • GES: New .NET Estimating System
  • Asta Partnership
  • Gold Coast Master Builders
  • Wing's World: Tips for real life
    		•

    scott mannow The Staff Profile will be a regular feature of BEN. In this edition, we take the opportunity to introduce a fairly new member of our Customer Support Department, Scott Mannow. Scott is a software support specialist and is fast becoming an important member of our Buildsoft staff team.

    Scott attended the William Carey Christian School at Prestons, NSW from 1996 to 2001 and obtained his Higher School Certificate. From 2002 to 2003 he attended TAFE at Padstow, NSW and obtained a Diploma in Software Development. This was followed, from 2004 to 2005, by obtaining a BA Technology (Information Technology Support) at the University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW.

    Scott has carried out some interesting projects, gaining valuable experience with software installation and support. At the William Carey Christian School, he developed a spelling application for the special needs students and installed this on the school's network. In 2005 Scott rebuilt and configured four classrooms of computers to run on the school network system and then configured the programs to run on this network.

    Scott has a strong desire to assist people in their use of information technology, and he has been striving to improve the functionality of the Buildsoft web site, which he felt had too many sublevels, sometimes making it difficult to obtain information quickly. Since we are about to start on a new look and feel for our web site, Scott's recent involvement will be invaluable on this project.

    Scott has also recently worked on the Buildsoft Support Forums to make them a more popular resource for our customers. Scott feels that the forums can be a useful tool, because they offer our customers access to the knowledge of other users, as well as the expertise of Buildsoft personnel.

    (Why not try out our forums? Enter our web site via the main page at www.buildsoft.com.au/, and select the 'Support' tab to find details on how to Register and Log In. Users with a current Maintenance Contract have full access to our support forums, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The forums contain all current software updates and many solutions to known problems.)

    Scott's outside interests include music, a passion he shares with a few other staff members. In the past he has played piano and drums but is now concentrating on classical guitar. He also plays soccer.
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    This year, Buildsoft exhibited at Designbuild, Australia's largest building and design expo covering residential, commercial and industrial construction. It is endorsed by such important organisations as The Master Builders Association, HIA, The Building Designers Association, The Australian Architecture Association and Austrade. The expo is held in May of each year and alternates between Sydney and Melbourne. This year it was held from 28 to 31 May at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, and was the biggest building materials and equipment show ever held in Melbourne.

    Total visitor numbers at the exhibition were 15,325—including 563 from overseas. Many of our existing and potential customers turned up at our Buildsoft Stand B28 to find out about new products and developments; some just dropped in to say a friendly, 'G'day'.

    We had an excellent team manning the stand, consisting of Jackie Fogg, Haydon Carroll, Greg Goldfayl (a Melbourne representative) and Graham Martin to demonstrate old and new products.    		 The design of the stand was very similar to the one we used for Designbuild 2005 in Sydney, mainly because it was so successful at that venue. One difference was that we used much larger LCD screens that allowed more visitors to view each demonstration. This proved very necessary, given the large numbers of interested people who kept us busy!

    We often had two groups of people to talk with at the same time; with Jackie concentrating on explaining the improvements to BTOS (Buildsoft Take-Off System) and the new MYOB accounts link, Haydon talked to visitors about the existing Offsider and Global Estimating systems, and took a significant number of orders—particularly for Buildsoft Offsider.

    This contact with old and new customers allowed us to gain an even better understanding of the Victorian market for our products.

    We also made a significant number of contacts with Victorian industry organisations, the Victorian university and technical teaching fraternity, and overseas representatives
    from Austrade.

    Buildsoft stand at Designbuild   Buildsoft stand at Designbuild Left: Standing room only for Haydon's demonstrations.   Right: Buildsoft's stand was full of exciting products.
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    Buildsoft has developed a facility that allows our estimating programs to interface with MYOB accounts. This MYOB Link will be available to both Global Estimating and Offsider Estimating Plus users as an optional extra, and will give improved 'job costing' information.

    The MYOB Link will allow purchase orders to be sent from the estimating system to MYOB, and will also read accounting information entered into MYOB, such as supplier invoices, payments and credits. This information is then combined in an overall 'job status' screen.

    The MYOB Link was demonstrated at the Designbuild 2006 expo held in Melbourne, where it was very well received. Comments included, 'It was easy to see how the two programs work together' and 'The presentation of MYOB information is simple to understand'. More importantly, people appreciated the fact that existing MYOB users do not need to 'double enter' data to obtain construction-related accounting information. In addition, they are now able to access vital construction-based accounting information without needing to purchase specialised and often expensive software.

    Other estimating systems claiming to work with MYOB often only pass budget totals into MYOB, and expect the user to view the results from within MYOB. The Buildsoft 'MYOB Link' is a far more advanced concept, and does much more!

    This MYOB Link module will be available for purchase for $495. Offsider users who are not using the 'Plus' version will be able to acquire the MYOB link by trading up to the 'Plus' version.

    The MYOB Link was developed for MYOB Premier v9 and MYOB Accounting v15. MYOB recently released updates for these products in the form of Premier v10 and Accounting v16, and Buildsoft is now updating the 'Link' to work with these new products.

    Look out for important release information to be announced on our web site at www.buildsoft.com.au.
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    We are very pleased to announce that Global Estimating Software Limited, whose head office is based in Hong Kong, has been awarded the sole distribution rights for Buildsoft software products in China, including Hong and Macau. They are also handling exclusive distribution for the Indian subcontinent, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

    The new office of Global Estimating Software Limited opened on 4 December in Hong Kong.

    Full contact details are:

    Contact: Mr. Calvin Chau
    Tel: +852 2891 9937 Fax: +852 2891 9927 Mob: +852 9863 5763
    Address: 4601 China Online Centre
    333 Lockhart Road,
    Wanchai, Hong Kong.
    Email: calvin@ges.com.hk
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    On the eve of going to press, negotiations for a very important distributorship for Victoria were concluded. We are therefore very pleased to announce the appointment of Meecon Pty Ltd as the Buildsoft Distributor for Victoria. Bernie Meehan is the Director of Meecon Pty Ltd, and will be handling the distributorship.

    Bernie has extensive experience in the building and construction industry, particularly with Fletcher Constructions, where he started as an estimator and worked his way through project management to become the Estimating Manager for Victoria. Bernie has a Graduate Diploma in Quantity Surveying and a Graduate Certificate of Building Management, and is a registered domestic builder, registered commercial builder and Associate Member of the Australia Institute of Building. He has extensive knowledge of the Buildsoft software range and is obviously eminently qualified to take on this important Distributorship.

    Contact details for our new Distributor for Victoria are:
    Bernie Meehan
    Meecon Pty Ltd
    Phone: (03) 9885 1772
    Fax: (03) 9886 9853
    Mobile: 0419 323 701
    Email: meecon@bigpond.net.au
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    A number of Buildsoft estimating users have been enjoying speedier take-off using the new BTOS take-off module for their estimating. The BTOS module helps with measuring from digital plans, such as CAD and PDF files, and also measuring quantities from paper plans via a digitiser. We have been getting a lot of feedback from customers using the module, and are using this information to make further improvements.

    We have now developed a specific version of BTOS for users who do not use a Buildsoft Estimating System, so that they too can experience the advantages of Buildsoft digital take-off. This stand-alone version also allows for measuring of quantities from either a digitiser or CAD files, but transfers the results to either a spreadsheet or some other Windows based program. In some cases, it can also transfer the results to other estimating systems.

    autodeskFurther, Buildsoft is now an accredited member of the Autodesk® Developer Network. In future, when CAD changes and improvements occur, they will be available to BTOS users more quickly.
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    The Buildsoft offices will be closed from 5.00 pm on Thursday 21 December 2006 through to
    9.00 am on Monday 15 January 2007 for the Christmas/New Year break.
    Any urgent enquiries during this period can be emailed to urgent@buildsoft.com.au.
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    The Global Estimating System has been undergoing a complete redevelopment and rewrite. Rewrites have occurred a few times over the life of the program, and this next one, being developed as a .NET application using the latest programming tools, will be called 'GES' (an unoriginal acronym).

    The general program design and facilities will not be compromised, but significant new functions and capabilities are being added. We will tell you more about these enhancements in forthcoming issues of this newsletter. Your comments and general suggestions are always welcome.

    One trademark of GES is that it allows for greater customisation. For example:
    • Item descriptions and other information can have individual font, colour and size selections to enhance the appearance of the final bill of quantities.
    • Columns of information will have additional controls, allowing user-defined headings, optional presentation styles, sequencing and the ability to stop other users from entering data in certain columns.
    • The style of the various 'head1' headings can be changed. Where information exists in a lower level, the colour can be changed from the current dark blue.
    These are only some of the new customisation facilities available in GES. Other improvements that have been made to the heavily used job coding, sorting and analysis reports are:
    • eight grouping columns instead of five (Q, Q2, Q3, Q4, R, R2, R3 and R4).
    • consistency of code columns (all now eight characters instead of sometimes two, or three, or five). This ends the restriction whereby some code files could only be used with some grouping columns.
    A related improvement deals with 'sorted' jobs, when one job gets 'sorted' into many other jobs. This can create two issues: first, the size of the job list tends to grow quite large. Second, people tend to forget which 'sorted' job belongs to which 'original' job. When a job is sorted in GES, it will group the new job with the original and will not add a new job to the job list. Opening a new job is accomplished by clicking on the original job first, and a list of sorted jobs will then be displayed.

    Some of the work being done for the new GES system will also be available to Offsider users. In addition, extra functions are being created specifically for Offsider users, including dedicated calc sheets for various types of construction.

    Additional details and some screen shots of GES will appear in the next edition of this newsletter. It is important to note that GES will not be available for some time yet, but the multi-level program is being tested in Buildsoft's offices.
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    Master Builders is Queensland's largest building industry membership organisation, representing more than 10,500 members including residential and commercial builders, subcontractors, manufacturers, industry consultants, associates and students.

    For more than a century, Master Builders has been supporting its members with specialised advice, products and services that keep them up to date with the latest building techniques, standards and legislation. To assist in the key area of providing specialised advice on estimating software, Buildsoft has entered into a business partnership arrangement with Master Builders Gold Coast. Our Queensland Distributor, Neale Bunyon, has already attended two functions-an information evening for members and an estimating course, where he demonstrated and talked about Buildsoft software products.

    Neale's contact details are:
    Neale Bunyon
    neale bunyan
    With BUILDSOFT
    Phone (07) 3801 4236
    Fax (07) 3801 3755
    Mobile 04 3801 4236
    Email: Neale@c2e.com.au
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    Estimators spend a large slice of their life in front of a monitor. Granted, some have very sophisticated monitors, but even the 'best' monitor with the 'crispest' resolution starts to burn holes in your retina after a while. Therefore, anything that lessens the eyestrain is a good thing!

    What you need to do is tweak your computer to give yourself cleaner fonts.

    How to kill the pixels
    Later editions of Windows ME, and all versions since, have a feature called 'edge smoothing'. Some computers you purchase will already have this feature turned on. However, many machines do not. Here's how you activate it:
    1. Close enough of your open windows so that you have a clean view of your Desktop.
    2. Right click on your Desktop. You'll get a pop-up menu.
    3. On the pop-up menu, select 'Properties'. It's usually the last item on the list.
    4. At this point, you should now have a second pop-up menu headed 'Display Properties' (see below).wing's world
    5. Click on the 'Appearance' tab. You'll see two buttons: 'Effects...' and 'Advanced', along with a view of how your current theme is configured. Click the 'Effects...' button.
    6. One of the items will now have a checkbox (probably unchecked at the moment), which reads 'Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:' and then a dropdown menu. Choose 'ClearType' from the dropdown menu and ensure that the checkbox next to this selection is checked.
    7. Click 'OK.' The Effects window will close.
    8. You should be back to the Display Properties window. Click 'Apply,' then 'OK.'
    QED. All your screen fonts should look much better now!
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