04.03 How Plans Are Shared By Bids in a Project

Share and Share Alike

The Plan Organizer is a Project-level inventory of all the Plans and Plans Sets that are available for use in a Project. Plan Sets are then shared amongst all the Bids within the Project (this way, you don't have to upload the same set of Plans every time you add a Bid to Project, you just have to activate what's already there).

• You make a Plan Set active or inactive at the Bid-level, discussed later in this chapter, even though you launch the Plan Organizer from a Bid.
• Every Plan Set you add gets added to the Project, and subsequently can be made active in any Bid in that Project. 
• Example: let's say you have a Project with Plan Set A added to the Plan Organizer. There are two Bids in that Project, and Plan Set A has been "activated" in both. You open Bid #1 and and then, from the Takeoff Tab, access the Plan Organizer and add Plan Set "B". If you then open the Plan Organizer for Bid #2, you'll see that Plan Set B there, however, it will not be "active" yet. It is only "activated" for the Bid through which the Plan Organizer was opened, even though it's available to all other Bids in the Project.
• Just because a Plan Set exists, doesn't mean you have to make it active in every Bid in a Project. 
• Example: continuing with the previous example, let's say you never need to use Plan Set B in Bid #2, that's fine - you never have to activate it. 
• Plans that exist in more than one Plan Set are called "revisions" of that Plan. As long as they've been matched correctly, all the Plans will be shown as "revisions" in a Page. (A Page is really a container that holds all the images/plans for that Page, all the takeoff and annotations, and any Bid Attachments.)
• Example: If Plan Set "A" contained Plans A1, A2, and A3, and Plan Set "B" includes newer versions of A1 and A2, you would 'match' those newer versions with their predecessors in the Plan Organizer. On the Takeoff Tab, you would see these Revisions at the bottom of the screen, newest on the left. Because there was not a revision for Page A3, you would only see it's "original" version on the Takeoff Tab.
• Plans that exist in only one Plan Set are considered "unique" Plans. Deleting or Disabling that Plan Set will delete the Page associated with that Plan (and any Annotations, Takeoff, or Attachments on that Page). If disabled for a Bid, the Page is only deleted in that Bid, however, if the Plan Set is deleted from the Project, the Page would be deleted/removed from every Bid in the Project. 
• Example: Let's say we deactivated Plan Set "A" in Bid 1 - this leaves only Plan Set B active and Plan Set B only includes Pages A1 and A2. This means there is no Plan in any active Plan Set for Page A3 - it is subsequently removed from the Bid (along with anything that was stored on it - takeoff, annotations, Bid Attachments). Don't worry - you are warned (twice) before you are allowed to do something that causes a Page to be deleted/removed from a Bid. This is what happens when you deactivate a Plan Set for a Bid. However...
• Example: Let's say instead of deactivating Plan Set "A", we created a new Bid in the Project. When we look at the Plan Organizer, opened through Bid 3, we say to ourselves, I don't need this Plan Set "A", and we delete it. We have now deleted the entire Plan Set from the Plan Organizer, not just from Bid 3. This leaves only Plan Set 2 and means that Page A3 would be removed/deleted from Bid 1 and Bid 2 - all Bids in a Project share the Plan Sets - deleting a Plan Set deletes it from every Bid in the Project and "unique" Pages are deleted along with it.

What is the Current Set?

Plan Organizer Toolbar and Context Menu