When we have the area of a material from Revit, like metal studs or CMU, is there a precalculated multiplier in OCLA that will let us go from area to the units of those materials (either volume or weight)? We’re familiar with Tally having dropdown menus with sizes of CMU which have precalculated volumes per unit of area, and for studs having a dropdown to select gauge, depth, spacing, perimeter, etc, which similarly calculate volume or weight of metal per unit of area and take the wall dimensions into account. Tally additionally has precalculated quantities for CMU mortar, % of CMU fill, rebar spacing… I assume I must manually add these materials to set up the assembly in OCLA, but these precalculated volume or weight multipliers relative to area are very convenient. How is this handled in OneClick LCA?
Hi Scott,
welcome to our community and thanks for your questions and your feedback! Below are the two different topics I identified in your post.
- How can the software convert inputs in a certain unit to another unit (e.g. going from area of CMU to volume of CMU)?
If you choose a resource available in both area and other units, you can switch between them. Example: If you toggle from “cu ft” to “lbs”, the software automatically calculates the weight corresponding to the inputted volume (see below).
If a certain unit is unavailable, it’s because it isn’t mentioned in and couldn’t be inferred from the EPD/generic data point.
You can use the filter “unit” to find only materials that have the unit that you want available. When searching for materials in the New Data Input Page (BETA) you see all the units a resource is available in next to it (see below).
- Are there any precalculated quantities e.g. for studs or mortar per area inputted?
I think generic constructions could help here. For the one I screenshot below, you can see the precalculated volume of CMU per area that I selected, and we have the steel studs in weight per unit of area. The CMU mortar quantity is also precalculated per area (last row).
Thank you for your feedback about being able to calculate volume/mass of studs from their spacing, depth etc. I can understand why this would be helpful and I forwarded your feedback to your product management team for consideration. If you’d like, I can email you once this process is done.
If you’re not content with the precalculated ratios or chosen materials, you can edit this via “Create a variant and replace”.
I hope this is helpful to you. Please let me know if you have further questions.