I've spent the past two months extensively evaluating electrical estimating software. I have looked most extensively at Conest and Accubid, and also spent time with Mccormick, DBM, Jaffe, and Quantum XP. These packages actually use quite different takeoff design philosophies. McCormick is a very ?flat? system where you open multiple windows and grab all the items you want in your takeoff. There are few prompts or calculations in the takeoff modules. Conest, is at the opposite end of the spectrum. If you are using Conest to its fullest, you will enter an assembly such as a receptacle with Branch. Conest will then prompt you for the number of boxes, avg length of conduit between boxes, height of the installation, etc. If you enable auto-labor factoring, it will adjust your labor based on the answers you entered. For example, long runs of conduit and wire could have a multiplication factor of .6X while a short run might be 1.25X. Conest will work best for you if you like to use more detailed assemblies and don?t mind answering the prompts each time you takeoff. This is how I prefer to take off, # of like devices, avg conduit length, adjust for height, #stories above ground, etc. I?m not an expert, but I do not believe McCormick?s assemblies can combine qty and length based variables. Accubid is in between McCormick and Conest. It is easy to use and you can create assemblies with QTY and Length based formulas, but not nearly as complex formulae as you could create with Conest. Accubid?s formula structure is also very easy to understand. Conest, on the other hand, uses a series of several hundred variables and formulas. As a former programmer, I figured them out pretty easily, but I think most people will get lost and end up using the included assemblies or making custom assemblies based on std ones with a few minor changes.
With Accubid, you can alter an assembly at take-off time (such as changing or adding items) and after you have taken it off, you can bring it back up again and re-edit it as an assembly. With Conest, once it is taken off, you can no longer go back and edit it as an assembly (you can change the individual items or qty?s but you lose the ability to re-enter many of the prompts once you hit take-off). You also cannot alter the assembly at take-off, such as subbing 4/0 wire for 3/0, while this is very simple with Accubid. Conest?s procedure is to copy an assembly to a custom assembly, make your changes, and then take it off which is much more time consuming.
The biggest negative for Conest (to me, at least) is that the user interface is essentially 20 yrs old, looks like it is running Windows 3.1, and is ocked into 1024X768 resolution (for all practical purposes). This may not sound that important, but if you have a high resolution monitor, Accubid and McCormick will take full use of that real estate while you will be scrolling all over the place with Conest while it only uses up ? of your screen. The other thing I really hate is that with almost any other package, you can takeoff an assembly and rename it so that it makes sense to your particular takeoff. For example, in Accubid, you can takeoff 3? EMT, with (4) 250MCM THHN and rename it ?Feed from MSB to RTU#1.? In Conest, you need to insert a comment line and then type the description as a comment. It works but it?s more time consuming and you don?t always get what you expect on your reports.
The biggest negatives for Accubid (again for me) are that it isn?t really running a proper transaction database (meaning you need to save the file like a spreadsheet) and you cannot easily determine the cost and labor affects of items you are adding to your assemblies ? you add and see what happens, then delete if it isn?t what you want. There is a work-around where you make a copy of your DB and open the copy in the DB editor and use that to view items which you are looking for. I also really like the auto-labor factoring in Conest. Accubid has a labor-factoring system which is easy to use but manual.
Despite how much I hate the interface, I think I am going to pick Conest (final decision this week). In addition to what I mentioned above, it has very sophisticated substitution routines (including changing from MC to EMT with Conest properly sizing conduits per NEC), power breakout functions, and I am an electrical engineer as well as an electrical contractor and Conest is sort of a complex, hardcore, geeky product, which I like. Many of the things that I like about Conest, would be big negatives for someone else.
I would appreciate any comments from experienced Conest/Accubid users as it is difficult to fully appreciate the long term use of a product during a short demo.
