Tips and Pitfalls

A handful of habits will make your assemblies dramatically more useful over time.

Start coarse, refine later

A first-pass assembly with three components is more useful than a perfect ten-component one that takes a week to build. Ship something rough, refine when you have real estimates flowing through it.

Use waste factors as variables, not as inflated constants

0.15 * (1 + {waste_factor}) is clearer than 0.165 and lets the user dial waste up for difficult jobs.

The intent is visible in the expression, and you can adjust waste at apply-time without editing the assembly.

Names matter for AI suggestions

When you apply assemblies later (in the rate builder or in takeoff), the AI matches your line item description against assembly names. Clear names = better suggestions.

Good: “150 mm Reinforced Slab”, “Painted internal wall — 2 coat”, “Copper pipe 22 mm — supply and install”.
Bad: “Slab”, “Paint job”, “Pipe stuff”.

Describe the output, not the recipe

Name the assembly after what it produces, not what’s in it. “150 mm Reinforced Slab” — not “Concrete + rebar mix”. Future-you searching for “slab” will find it; future-you searching for “concrete + rebar” won’t.

Deletion is blocked when an assembly is in use

Delete is blocked when an assembly has been applied somewhere. Edit it instead, or duplicate-and-replace if the change is destructive.