For a more in-depth explanation of this topic, check out this video on our YouTube channel.
To understand how material quantities are tied to your project's sketch in RoofSnap, you'll need to understand the concept of use measurements. Use measurements are set at the category level in your Materials settings, and are used to calculate what quantity of a given material is used when you add this material to an estimate in your project. All of our system-generated categories have a use measurement that can't be edited. To check how material quantities in a given category are calculated, navigate to your Materials settings. Then, select one of our system-generated categories on the left-hand side, and hover over the information icon in the upper left-hand corner:
As you can see in this example, the use measurement formula for the Ice & Water Shield category is Ice & Water Shield total x Ice & Water Shield waste factor. Since the Unit for this category is $/ln. Ft., We can see that, for example, a project that includes 100 linear feet of Ice & Water Shield and a 10% waste factor would add 110 feet of Ice & Water Shield if an item from this category is selected when building an estimate.
Creating Your Own Custom Use Measurements
There may be situations where you'd like to change the Unit (i.e. $/ln. Ft.) for a given category. One example of this is that Florida building codes require roofers to cover the entire roof area with ice and water shield. Since ice and water shield has a Unit of $/ln. Ft., and this is a pre-defined system category that can't be changed, you'll need to create your own category in cases like this.
Create and Name Your New Category
To get started, you'll need to create a brand new category. First, navigate to your Materials settings, then click New Category on the left-hand side:
We recommend giving the new category the same name as the system category along with the unit of measurement in parentheses. For our ice and water shield example, I named my new custom use measurement category Ice & Water Shield ($/sq), then clicked the drop-down menu and set the use measurement to Total Squares (Including Waste) as seen below:
Add Materials to Your New Category
Now that you've created your new use measurement category, you'll need to copy the materials from the original category into this one. Begin by selecting Detailed View in the upper right-hand corner:
Now, copy the name of a Material from the original category into the Add Material text box in the new category and click the green Add Material button:
Copy over the rest of the Material's details such as coverage, labor cost, material cost, and factor and click Save:
Repeat these steps for the rest of the Materials in the original category until both categories match. Now, when building out an estimate, you'll be able to pick the Material you want to use from the new category, and the quantities that are displayed on documents such as Estimates and Material Orders will be calculated using the custom use measurement.