Craft Quantities
Plan & Takeoffs

By trade

Carpentry calculators

Framing is arithmetic on a spacing, and the spacing decides more than the count: it decides the sheet layout, the noggings, the fixings and whether a service can pass through a member at all. A rafter is the same problem on a slope, where the length on the drawing is never the length of the timber.

  • 45Calculators
  • 2Parts of the site

How carpentry is measured

Counts for members at a centre-to-centre spacing, linear metres for plates and rims, and sheets for anything that boards over. Timber is then bought in stock lengths, so the order is a cutting problem and not only a total: eleven metres of 2.4 m stock is five lengths, not 4.6.

Where carpentry sits on this site45 across 2
45

Renovation & Construction13

Materials & Quantities32

What gets left off a carpentry order

  • The extra studs a corner, a T-junction and every opening need, which no spacing produces.
  • Noggings and blocking at sheet edges, at services and behind anything heavy that will later be screwed to a wall.
  • Cutting waste on a pitched roof, where rafters are cut from stock and the offcut from a common rafter rarely makes another.
  • Hangers, straps and nails at the rate the fixing schedule actually calls for, rather than a round number of boxes.

Job takeoffs22

Where carpenters meet the rest of the job: each runs one of these calculators, with every other trade in the same job beside it.

Worked examples5

A real job estimated step by step, with this trade's steps counted.

Comparisons16

Two ways of doing the same work, weighed against each other.

Planners4

Work this trade out from a space rather than from a job.