Steel Quote

Structural steel cost estimation works by converting a take-off (the list of every steel member on a job, with its size, length and quantity) into a total weight, then pricing that weight at your own rates for hot rolled, hollow, fabricated and purlin sections, painting or galvanising, bolts, drafting and fabrication labour - plus your margin - to arrive at a project value.

1. Set your Item Variables (waste %, cleats %, material rates, bolt price, fabrication hours per ton) and Project Variables (drafting, fabrication $/hr, margin %). These apply to whichever items you add next, and can be changed for later items without affecting ones already added.
2. For each member: choose its Type and Size (or enter a Custom weight), set Quantity and Length, pick a Coating (Galvanized, Painted or Raw), then click ADD. The item is added to the Member Schedule with its own snapshot of the current rates.
3. Click any line in the Member Schedule to load it back into the form - EDIT commits your changes to that line, REMOVE deletes it, and ADD again creates a new duplicate line from the current values.
4. Quantities, Costs and Project Costs totals update automatically as you add, edit or remove items.
5. Use EXPORT RAW for a plain print-friendly text view, ESTIMATE SHEET for a PDF summary, EXPORT EXCEL for the full spreadsheet breakdown, or OPEN to reload a previously saved Excel file and continue where you left off.
6. Your work autosaves to this browser as you go (watch for the green ✓ Saved tick, top right) and is offered back next visit. Hover over (or tap) any ? for an explanation of that field. Handy shortcuts: Enter adds the current item, Escape clears the entry fields, Delete removes the selected schedule line, and REMOVE can be undone for a few seconds via the UNDO toast. The floating pill at the bottom right shows the running total; the moon/sun button (top right) switches dark mode.

Note: the exported Excel file is also the calculator's save file. Editing the spreadsheet manually and then loading that file with OPEN will likely cause information to load incorrectly - to make changes, use OPEN to load the file back into the calculator, make the changes here, and export again.