RESOURCES

 
AUTOCAST

AutoCAST was developed specifically to make your job of drawing precast concrete erection drawings and production drawings considerably easier and faster through the use of industry specific menus and stored information. Inserts, steel shapes, industry standard concrete shapes and weld symbols are only a few of the tools available in AutoCAST.

AutoCAST version 2000 is intended to be a drawing tool that can help you make your AutoCAD drawings more clear, concise and understandable while improving your productivity. AutoCAST includes HardCOUNT, a powerful database of automated production drawing features to further improve the efficiency of your precast/prestressed concrete drawings.

AutoCAST operates in conjunction with AutoCAD Release 2000, 2000i, 2002 with Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro platforms. We recommend a minimum 256 MB RAM be used for AutoCAST and AutoCAD. The commands in the documentation are shown by pull down menu locations.

HARDCOUNT

HardCOUNT was developed specifically for the Precast Concrete Industry to make your job of counting and tracking materials much easier, so you can spend more time thinking about developing drawings and efficient designs for precast concrete buildings. The basic premise behind HardCOUNT is that a given connection detail will be used many times in a structure. It must be determined how many times each connection occurs in the structure and what material each connection requires to be successfully completed. HardCOUNT begins by requesting that you identify the connection on the plans and elevation views of your building by using any drawing element that can be "tagged." This "tag" information is ultimately used to identify the connection and to thereby track the material required to complete all of the connections in the structure. HardCOUNT can also track piece mark numbers and provide a well organized piece mark summary.

HardCOUNT is capable of opening multiple drawings and counting and tracking different connections that are used to assemble the structure. Once HardCOUNT has counted how many times each of the connection details occurs on the structure, it will then go to the detail sheets where it will find detailed information about completing the connections. HardCOUNT will extract the different materials used to make the connection (contractor material, production material, and erection material). HardCOUNT will do the necessary mathematics to give you a complete count of contractor material, production material, and erection material for the project. HardCOUNT will combine materials from various connections that are identical so that common materials used in more than one connection detail can be combined as a single entry on your final bill of material.

Material lists presented by HardCOUNT are divided into like components:
All contractor material is presented in a single list. All production material is presented in a single list with plates, angles and bars grouped with similar materials. Erection material is presented in an organized fashion with plates, bars, pads, etc. grouped with like materials.

HardCOUNT is also capable of making you more efficient at fully detailing the connection information. HardCOUNT does this by "remembering" previously specified materials in a database. You can then access the hardware name from the database, effortlessly providing leaders to each item that you wish to call out on the drawings. This feature alone will allow you to do substantially less keyboard input in generating your AutoCAD based drawings.

To raise your comfort level that all connection locations have been "tagged" and therefore will be included in the material counts, HardCOUNT has a special feature that allows you to highlight all "tagged" entities that will be counted by HardCOUNT when you are ready for a material list. You may also use the LABELALL command to label all tagged entities with AutoCAD text. This is very useful for checking purposes so the checker can see which entities have been tagged and with what information. Now you can rest assured that all connection locations have been identified and will be provided for in your hardware ordering.

The robust features of HardCOUNT will help you eliminate errors in material counting by finding errors that you may overlook in setting up connection systems for your structure.

HardCOUNT is a valuable tool in establishing material preorders, allowing adequate time to order materials, and helping to eliminate the additional expense that last minute ordering may necessitate. Every effort has been made to make HardCOUNT as user friendly as possible. Training on its use is recommended to maximize the benefits of HardCOUNT in as short a period as possible. Please call us for support and training for HardCOUNT.

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