The drawing becomes the price — the material list off the model, your yard's prices, your labour, your markup at three levels — and a saved version to go back to or compare against.
The operating system for post-frame and barndominium builders.
Instead of: Three days to price a building, two estimators landing on two different numbers, and a margin nobody can prove.
Estimate total
How this total is built
Materials$49,808.75
Framing$18,420.00
Sheathing$12,905.50
Trim$3,180.00
Doors & Windows$9,640.00
Foundation$4,275.00
Fasteners$1,388.25
Labor$8,910.53
Erect shell2,400 sf · 176 hrs × $42.25/hr$7,436.00
Walk doors & windows3 × 1.5 hrs$190.13
Overhead doors2 × 4 hrs$338.00
Lean-to / porch480 sf · 22.4 hrs$946.40
Services & site work$25,546.00
Concrete Pad2,400 Per Sq Ft × $7.25$17,400.00
Site Prep & Grading$2,850.00
Seamless Gutters168 Per Linear Ft × $9.50$1,596.00
Custom Garage Door2 × $1,850.00$3,700.00
Markup+$9,083.22
Markup · Framing · 10%+$1,842.00
Markup · Doors & Windows · $500+$500.00
Markup · Everything · 8%+$6,741.22
Customer total
Materials, labor, services and markup — everything the customer pays.
$93,348.50
The estimate's total as it appears on every screen — the one number the model, the list, the quote and the contract share. Real screen · sample data.
Scroll — 8 steps
Where it starts
The material list falls out of the drawing
Every member the model draws is counted — posts, girts, purlins, trusses, steel, trim, fasteners — and bought in the lengths a yard actually stocks, with factory trusses kept as factory trusses. Post-frame and barndominiums, nobody else: that's why the list is counted the way a post-frame yard sells it. Same building, same list, whoever drew it. Your estimator stops counting sticks at night, and the owner can trust the number.
A list counted off a sketch by hand is a list two estimators count differently.
Design aid, not engineering — this is a purchase-vs-consumed takeoff from the same members the model draws. Stock lengths are yard lengths (no 60′ 2x4s). Factory trusses stay factory trusses. Not a substitute for a licensed design professional, a stamped truss package, or your local building department.
The real screen, drawn from the product’s own design system. Sample data — no customer information appears here.
Every material carries your cost and your sell price, in the unit your supplier sells it — the 2×12s, the 29-gauge steel, the C40P4 truss, freight and delivery. Change a price once and the quotes after it use it. Your reps quote with your real numbers, so the margin you planned is the margin you get.
Pricing off last year's sheet or a national average is how a job that looked good stops being profitable.
What you pay the yard, and what you sell it for. Update these when 2x6s or 6x6s change. The 3D builder uses the sell price to show a building cost when you finish a design.
MaterialUnitYour costSell price
6x6 / 3-ply laminated post
bound to 3 Ply 2x6 Lam. Post
LF
4.53
5.89
2x6 wall girt
bound to 2x6 SPF
LF
0.61
0.94
2x6 cripple
bound to 2x6 SPF
LF
0.61
0.94
2x6 window sill
bound to 2x6 SPF
LF
0.61
0.94
2x4 roof purlin
bound to 2x4 SPF
LF
0.53
0.73
2x8 skirt board (treated)
bound to Treated 2x8
LF
1.09
1.42
Wall steel panel
bound to 29Ga AG Panel
panels
42.00
53.34
Roof steel panel
bound to 29Ga AG Panel
panels
38.37
52.57
Ridge cap
bound to Ridge Cap 14″ Wide
LF
1.88
2.48
Wall insulation (girt bays)
no catalogue binding · estimated, not audited
sqft
0.85
1.35
Cupola kit
bound to 3 ft Cupola Kit
ea
1000.00
1300.00
Save prices
Changing a price here does not rewrite old sent estimates. New designs pick up the book the next time you finish a building. Example 6x6 sell is $5.89 / LF.
The real screen, drawn from the product’s own design system. Sample data — no customer information appears here.
Labour figured from the building, with the exceptions written down
The labour calculator works from the building itself — base labour by the square foot, then house wrap, height over 14 feet, openings and garage doors. When a job has something the formula can't know, it goes in as its own line with its reason: a crane day at $1,850 for trusses over the tree line, $900 because the site is only reachable from the west. Already have a fixed labour quote? Manual entry replaces the calculator. Anyone can see why the number is what it is, so nobody has to defend it from memory.
A labour number that lives in the estimator's head can't be checked, repeated or handed to anyone else.
Site work from your own catalog, priced the way you sell it
Pick the concrete pad from your catalog, type 40 by 60, and the line prices itself: 2,400 square feet at $7.25, $17,400. Here the rate has been raised above the $6.95 standard, and the line says so, with a reset. The customer reads what they're getting — a 4-inch pad, 3,500 psi, fibre mesh — not a bare number. Site prep, gutters, doors and permits sit in the same catalog, priced the way you sell them. Reps stop guessing at site work, which is where margins quietly leak.
Site work priced from memory is the line that eats the margin on an otherwise good job.
Customer sees: 4″ pad, 3,500 psi, fiber mesh with saw-cut control joints.tailored
$17,400.00
×
Length (ft)
40
×
Width (ft)
60
or
Rate / sq ft
$ 7.25
above standard $6.95 — reset
Square feet
2,400
40′ × 60′ = 2,400 sq ft × $7.25 = $17,400
The real screen, drawn from the product’s own design system. Sample data — no customer information appears here.
Beat four
Markup on the line, the section or the whole project
Set a markup on one line, a whole section, or the project. Here: 5% across the Services & Add-Ons section and 10% on the concrete pad line, on top of the project's own. All of it is built into the prices the customer sees — every line on their copy already has its markup in it. The customer reads one honest price per line, and you keep control of your margin where it matters.
One markup line at the bottom of the page invites the question you don't want: what's that?
Your numbers on one side, their price on the other
Flip the summary between Builder view and Customer view. Yours shows cost and markup on each part of the job; theirs shows what they'll pay, with the markup already inside each figure. Here: 30% on the project, 5% on the services and 10% on the pad, all inside one customer total of $143,438.71 — the same total in both views, because the same arithmetic produces both. You can price with confidence, knowing the customer sees exactly what you meant them to.
A builder copy and a customer copy kept in two spreadsheets is how the two totals stop matching.
When a rep types a price that isn't your catalog's — a concrete porch pad at $13.00 a square foot against the book's $10.00 — the estimate can't go out until somebody allowed to approve prices says so. They approve it at the rep's price, set their own, or decline it. Reps keep room to sell, and the owner keeps the final word on margin.
A discount a rep gave on his own shows up for the first time in your job costing.
Save a version when a round of changes is ready, and the building, every material line, every service and the prices are frozen as they stood — so you can go back to one, or compare two. On the Brenneman 40×60 shop, version 3 against version 1 is $28,206 more, $60,726.40 to $88,932.48. Where it moved: materials up $4,944, labour $3,360, services $16,880, markup $3,022 — a 40×12 porch on the front, a 3′ wainscot, a 4″ concrete pad and seamless gutters. Copy for the customer puts it in plain words for a text. When the customer asks what changed, you have the answer in one look.
Saving over the old number means the price the customer is holding may not be any price you can find.
Pick two versions below — the older one is the starting point.
Version 1 → Version 3
+$28,206$60,726.40 → $88,932.48
Where it movedv1v3Change
Materials$31,420.00$36,364.00+$4,944
Labor$18,600.00$21,960.00+$3,360
Services$4,200.00$21,080.00+$16,880
Markup$6,506.40$9,528.48+$3,022
The building
Added: Porch 40′×12′ on the front
Wainscot: no wainscot → 3′ wainscot
Services
added4″ Concrete Pad · 2400 sq ft+$15,000
addedSeamless Gutters & Downspouts · 160 lin ft+$1,880
Materials
Compare in the Versions window — two versions picked, the difference in the total, where it moved, what changed in the building, the services and the materials by category, with Copy for the customer. Real screen · sample data.
The drawing becomes the price — the material list off the model, your yard's prices, your labour, your markup at three levels — and a saved version to go back to or compare against. Twenty minutes, on one of your real structures — and the link we build is yours to keep whether or not you go any further.