What’s New on CostOS® 4
1.
The Assembly Designer
Smart assemblies is a must have feature for modern estimating. A company can build its inteligence and experience on Assemblies, and this will enable it to produce estimates at a fraction of the time required by using old fashioned methods. The Assembly Designer enables users to fully automate or semi- automate their estimates. Assemblies can be easily defined by the estimators while using an “Excel Type” mathematical language, and kept on the central database.
What Diffeneciates CostOS from other estimating packages is the simplicity and the ease of developing smart assemblies. The last can produce BOQ items based on logical statements, they can calculate their quantities and assign resources to them. The assemblies can use historical, online commercial or conceptual data. Even more powerful excel type 1dimension and 2 dimensions lookup tables are supported by the new assembly designer.
2. GIS Takeoff This unique feature allows users to perform takeoffs on map. Estimators can open a Map, use a satellite view if they want, and start measuring quantities from it. CostOS also uses NASA’s web service to provide the elevations of the items on the map.
3. Excel Functionality Estimators can experience excel functionality within CostOS 4: - They can directly type on the BOQ Table, and on the resource or group code Tables. - They can also type resource rates on the BOQ Item rate fields and CostOS will create plugged-in resources. - The formulas of Excel were also implemented and users can find all excel functions on the function library. Formulas can be used at a cell level in a similar to MS Excel way - Excel type filters and custom filters, freezing of columns and a horizontal scrollbar allow the users to work in a familiar interface.
4. Ribbon Toolbar A new Ribbon Toolbar has been implemented in the current version, simplifying many processes and making the software a lot more intuitive. The new graphical interface was carefully designed having the Estimators in mind.
5. Field Customization CostOS 4 can be regarded as the most “open” estimating package in the market today. All BOQ Table fields can be “opened” and the approved users can change the pre loaded formulas and the way calculations are performed, as well as rename the fields. Moreover CostOS 4 comes with 30 custom fields to be used according to the Estimators needs (10 decimal type, 5 decimal and cumulative at WBS and Groupcode levels, 10 percentage type and 5 text). 6. Even more powerful trends The historical data used for making a prediction based on a trend, in now stored within the Projects. The users can visualize and amend the data of the trend by displaying it on the assignment panel. Trends can be created based on timeline, weight and referred quantity.
7. Rate Origin The origin of the rate and the quantity is marked with a symbol, allowing the estimator to check at a glance the accuracy and the progress of the estimate. 8. Function Takeoff Users can define functions which can be used for quantity takeoff at the BOQ table. More than one takeoff functions can be assigned on a single BOQ Item and the users can modify their input at any time. These functions can also have BIM, GIS, PDF or even other function takeoffs as an input.
9. Cost Model Buttons Users can create buttons for their Cost Models / Assemblies and access them from the Ribbon toolbar. This enables them to build estimates really quickly. 10. NORSOK Coding The Norwegian Standards Coding structure for process projects comes preloaded within the new version 11. Improved Excel Export The Export of the BOQ to excel includes excel groupings 12. Ability to view the resource assignments of a line Item before assigning it to a BOQ Item 13. Ability to create a line Item with plugged in rates while assigning it to the BOQ Item 14. Ability to copy and paste whole groups of items 15. Ability to assign group codes to assemblies 16. Showing and hiding the assembly grouping within other groupings
17. BIM Visualizer embeded on the BOQ Table for displaying the relation of the 3D elements with the BOQ Items that are using them
18. GIS Based Location Factors both for companies undertaking international operations and for those that want to elaborate their estimates for different areas within the same country