Unit Labor hrs - D-Tools Forum

ChristianB · 06-12-2009, 09:59 AM

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not used to divide 1 hr (60mins) into 100s. 1 hr 30 mins must be entered as 1.5 hrs. 45 mins will then be 0.75 hrs. 15 mins is entered as 0.9 hrs... Not very logical.

David_Haddad · 06-12-2009, 01:54 PM

Actually, 15 minutes would be .25 hours so I can see why you are confused

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I'm surprised you are making this complaint about hours, since there is no need to break things into more than 15 minute increments it's not too hard to know that your only options are .25, .50 or .75. On the other hand it would be nice if the dimensions field could accept measurements expressed as either 10 1/8" OR 10.13", since some manufacturers express it one way and some the other, and there are a lot more than (3) options to have to remember. In fact for all I know it may work that way, but I have not tested it.

ChristianB · 06-12-2009, 10:25 PM

I meant 10 mins... :P

I've been working a few years now with MS Project, so I thought that it would be the same way of estimating duration. So if you put in 1.45 in D-tools you are missing approx 22 mins compared to MS Project. It was the fact that D-tools wouldn't accept 1:45 as a time format that made me check if it would accept 1.75 - and it did. So I then spent about an hour recalculating the labor hours on all items in a project just to find out that I got 8 more hours of billable hours. Thats about $800 extra that was discovered by a coincidence.

David_Haddad · 06-14-2009, 03:31 AM

Got it, I can see why if you are used to entering time that way it would be a PITA to switch back and forth.

p.s. 10 minutes isn't .9 hours either :p

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ChristianB · 06-14-2009, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by David_Haddad

p.s. 10 minutes isn't .9 hours either :p

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So you see how confusing this is?

ChristianB · 06-20-2009, 11:52 AM

BTW, you will need to break hrs down to more than 15 min increments when adding a wire to the Rouch-In phase as SI handles wire & cable in that phase as spooled cable. If you then add 15 min (0.25 hrs) as Unit Labor Hrs to that product, SI will multiply that time with the value of the default wire length. Wire and cable in all other phases is handled as one wire with a defined length.

AE Engineer · 06-24-2009, 10:11 PM

yes, bulk wire is calculated that way, but if you are going to express your wire runs in packages anyway, then you can create a rough-in labor line item for 15 minutes of time and then set your phase of the wire to Rough-in and leave the hours at 0. Simply insert your wire with the correct footages, then add in the rough-in 15 minute labor line item and as many times as you think you need to for the wire pull, and wahlllaa, you have a package with the same amount of labor in it as you would if you had labor attached to the wire. This also helps for wire items that have a higer percieved value. You cahrge more for a cat5 internet run than you do for a cat5 phone run. All I do is change the number of labor line items in the job, and BAM, I have a package that costs more and it doesnt skew my product margins, or make me have to create multiple line items of the same wire with different labor calcs in them.

EX -

Phone Package:

1 Cat 5 Blue - 125FT
1 Single Port Leviton Quickport PLate
1 Leviton USOC 6 conductor insert
1 Arlington LVMB1 rough in ring
2 Rough-in .25 Labor line items
1 Trim .25 Labor Line item.
1 $0 Custom Phone Icon Item

**Ryan Brown** · 07-22-2009, 05:50 PM

Very good information AE.

One alternative to zeroing out the labor on the wires in the database (in case at some point you wanted to add those wires to a project by themselves and still include that labor) would be to use the check box in package setup to 'ignore labor calculations on equipment and wire'. Essentially what this does is ignore the labor coming from the individual items and only makes use of any labor type items added to the package.

And since we're talking about wire packages (which as AE says is the best way to go) there's one other tip I'll give that isn't very obvious to find.

If you set your Wire Length (in the package setup in MMPD) to zero, when you add that package to your D-Tools project it will automatically set your wire length for those items = the default wire length for that job.

So what I've done is setup all my wires in packages that are 'Home Runs' with wire lengths = 0. This way on any given project I can modify the default wire length to be 75, 100, 125, 150, etc... and all of my wires coming form my packages will use those lengths and I don't have to modify each package before adding to the project.