We hope you enjoyed a safe Thanksgiving weekend with your family and friends. Hopefully your pocket books aren’t any worse for the Black Friday shopping event.

As the year end approaches, we wanted to remind our customers about our upcoming holiday closures. QuickPen Technical Support will be open regular days / hours through Friday, December 23, 2011.

We will be closed the following days:

· Monday, December 26, 2011

· Monday, January 2, 2012

We will be open regular hours, 9 a.m. ET – 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - Friday, December 30, 2011. We will return to our normal support schedule on Tuesday, January 3, 2012. Please keep these support schedules in mind when scheduling server moves, licensing needs, or general support calls.

From the entire QuickPen staff at Trimble, we wish you a Merry Christmas! Our wish for you is a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2012.

Just a reminder, QuickPen Technical Support will be closed on Thursday, November 24th and Friday, November 25th in observance of the US Thanksgiving.

Have a wonderful holiday!

The holiday season is quickly approaching - and while not always, this sometimes means that there is a quiet period in your bid schedule that allows you to tackle some of those items on your "to do" list around the office. Why not add "tuning up your estimating systems" to your "to do" list?

Regardless of what estimating program you use (although I hope you're using an Autobid® system!), database management is going to be a key issue. While some databases require more attention than others, all of them need some general maintenance and tune-up to maintain their performance over time.

The biggest issues our AutoBid customers face is database size. We've seen a number of customers experience database issues due to size increase over the last year. As customers have migrated to OnScreen View of TakeOff, database sizes have exploded (the drawing files are stored within the database). –That said, let's help your system shed some of that excess weight.

The best suggestion to reduce database file size: get rid of the old projects. If you aren't actively using your estimate and it's a project that is "dead", delete it out of the program. You can still create a backup if you ever need to use it again - but at least this way, it won't be bogging down your day-to-day activities. Below are the step by step instructions to do this for both AutoBid® Mechanical and AutoBid SheetMetal.

For AutoBid SheetMetal:

1. Go into the Projects List (from the Bid Administrator Main Menu; File --> Project List)
2. Select the project that you want to delete by clicking on it. You can select more than one project at a time by using CTRL + Mouse Click or SHIFT + Mouse Click.
3. Go to the File menu and select "Export Bid".
4. A window will pop up. In this window, you'll tell the program that you want to export "All Bid Information" and select a directory location. Click on "Export".
5. You'll see the progress of the export on the bottom bar of this window. When it is done, it will say "Complete". You can then click on the "Close" button.
6. Now, we'll delete the projects by going to Edit --> Delete.
7. If you've only selected one project, just select "Delete It". If you've selected more than one project, you can tell the program you want to "Confirm" each delete or "Don't Confirm" and it will delete all of the selected projects.

For AutoBid Mechanical:

1. If you are on a network installation, make sure that all other users are out of the system.
2. From the Main Menu, select File --> Backup.
3. A Backup Wizard will open. The first step is to choose a file location & name, and then click on "Next".
4. In the next window, you can select what you want to back-up. We are going to back-up projects, so select "Projects" and then "Next".
5. Now you can select the project(s) that you want to back-up. You can multi-select by using SHIFT + Mouse Click or CTRL + Mouse Click. Once you've selected the projects, click on "Next". The program will back-up the files and you'll be returned to the Main Menu when it is done.
6. From the Main Menu, go to Tools --> Project List. If you access the Project List from another method, you will not be able to multi-select and delete.
7. You can now select the project(s) you want to delete. If you want to delete more than one project, you can turn on multi-select under View --> Multiple Select.
8. Go to the Edit Menu and selected "Delete".
9. A confirmation window will appear, you can either select to confirm each project deletion individually by clicking on "Delete" or you can delete all of the selected projects by clicking on "All".

By keeping the database file smaller, you'll reduce chances of corruption, database problems, and you'll have a system that runs faster. If you have any questions, please contact us for more information.

Happy Estimating!

It's that time again - we're almost ready for Beta testers for AutoBid SheetMetal 2011 v2.  We anticipate going to Beta around September 26, 2011.  Beta will conclude on October 21, 2011.

This release of AutoBid SheetMetal 2011 v2 will include the Trimble Quick Link License manager.  This new licensing manager will allow you to better administration of your QuickPen licenses.  However, you will need to have a non-production machine to do Beta testing on.

This release will include features from the last version of AutoBid Mechanical such as the ability to compare two PDF drawings and see the differences, place commands on the mouse menus, and quickly offset elevation in 1' increments.  As well as some functionality that we'll disclose next week!
Beta testers must own QuickPen AutoBid SheetMetal and be current on their Customer Care agreements.  If you are interested in participating, please contact me.

Happy Estimating!
Stacy

Holy cow – there went summer! Sorry for my silence – it's been a very busy summer both personally & professionally. Unfortunately, the blog posts were one of the items that fell off my to do list. But, it's back to school time (my kids just started 2^nd grade) – and it's time to get back in a better routine.

So, how many of you are using AutoBid's Multi-Branch Pairs function? It's been around for a long time – but I find that many people don't use it. It's available for both AutoBid® Mechanical and AutoBid® SheetMetal – and it's available in OnScreen View (OSV) or Graphical TakeOff (GTO). Multi-Branch Pairs is a fast way to add run-outs to different pieces of equipment, floor drains, or runouts to diffusers.

Here are a few quick tips to make Multi-Branch Pairs Takeoff even faster:

1. 1. Multi-branch pairs can be used for more than just inserting a tee into the run. It can also be used to "turn the corner" and convert a hot spot into an elbow (90 or 45). To do that, you just have to click on the elbow twice
   2. Just because you are changing size doesn't mean that you have to cancel out of your Multi-Branch pair command and start over. This one is a little trickier – all you have to do is just go and click on the new size in the "Start new run or Change Dims in run" window.
   3. Newer AutoBid® Touchmenus (for the digitizer) have this command on them. If yours doesn't, you can add this to your touchmenu.
   4. You can "branch" off different systems. AutoBid® is smart enough to know which system you are branching off of – we'll change to the appropriate fittings / systems.
   5. You can still have branches with different settings from the main when using this command. Recent versions of Multi-Branch pairs have added a toggle that controls whether or not we use the settings from the main or from the Next Item Settings Window. The toggle is at the top of the "Branch from (Multi-Pairs)" window when you start the command. Having the toggle "on" will grab the settings from the main – while having the toggle off will grab it from the Next Item Settings window.

If you have any questions or comments, please add them to the Comments section of the blog. And, check back frequently for more news. We've got some exciting stuff coming up soon –including information for the next version of AutoBid® SheetMetal Estimating. You won't want to miss it!

Happy Estimating!