Understanding the Differences Between the Units tab and the Rooms tab

In this article

• Why are these two types of interior spaces separated?
• Units and Rooms in Use Groups
• Examples
• Common Walls

Whenever we are presented with a new project in estimating, we understand that there are rooms within the building that require finishes, fixtures, and an array of other line items that are specific to those interior spaces. 

When we think about these interior spaces within the context of a project, which could include hotels, dorms, apartments, condos, etc. there are really two categories of interior space: 

• The first one are are "Units" within the Unit Mix. The Unit Mix describes the composition of the various repeating units in an estimate, like the number of one-bedroom/one-bathroom units in a condo. This concept applies to any type of repeating units based on the project type. For instance, in school construction, classrooms might be your Unit Mix, whereas in hospital projects, exam rooms might recur.
• Then, the spaces that serve a purpose to the function of the building as a whole, which refer to as “Rooms” in the platform. These can be found in the Rooms tab.

Why are these two types of interior spaces separated?

In most projects, it’s common for cost to be broken out on a per-unit basis, or per-bed basis, and therefore we need an intuitive way of tracking all of these factors throughout the building. Additionally, units in any type of project are typically designed to stack geometrically similar units, vertically, or repeat geometrically similar units throughout a specific floor.

Because of this, the Units tab is designed in a way that allows us to input the geometry of a type of unit, and plug in the count per-floor of that specified unit. 

The Rooms tab allows us to catalog all the functional rooms within a project. Typically, there are many more geometrically unique functional rooms than there are geometrically unique units, so we wanted to provide a separate method of visualization for the user to edit and track these unique functional rooms and their finishes. 

This allows the user to see the total cost of any specific room broken out separately under Total Cost. We also have our own Geometry worksheet for each of the rooms, and we are allowed to select the specific Finishes of any given room as well. 

Units and Rooms in Use Groups

It’s useful to note that every individual Use Group in a project gets its own Room and Unit page.

The project estimator should be aware that these pages are designed as such to allow us to display per-room cost breakouts separately for each respective Use Group. With that said, if you are working on a project with multiple Use Groups, pay attention to the Use Group in which you’ve selected to catalog your Rooms or your Units because it’s easy to accidentally place all rooms into one Use Group instead of their appropriate Use Group.

Examples

A common mistake would be the following example: Let’s say you’re estimating a project where there are both hotel guest rooms, and condo units in the same tower. Perhaps there are two lobbies; one for the hotel, and one for the condo. The hotel lobby should go in the hotel Use Group, and the condo lobby should go in the condo Use Group. This allows us and our clients to compare the cost for this project’s condo tenants, to the project’s cost for the hotel tenant.

Another example might be putting rooms associated with the Parking Use Group into the Residential Use Group.

Common Walls

As one final note, let’s talk about Common Walls. There are many places in Ediphi where you can track the quantities of material for interior walls, but one of the easiest places to do so is within the Units tab under Common Walls. This allows us to input global quantities of wall material rather than on a per-unit or per-room basis, which helps us prevent double counting a wall material for rooms that share a partition. 

If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team and we'll be happy to help!