Understanding Unit Properties
In Bentley OpenUtilities Designer, macro units and design units are defined with the same set of properties. Materials and custom costs have a different set of properties. Values for certain properties (such as ID and Name) are required; others are optional.
There are two kinds of unit properties:
- General text properties-such as ID, Name, and Description. These properties do not affect the unit's cost.
- Cost properties-such as fixed labor costs, hourly labor rate, equipment costs, and scrap and salvage values. Many of these properties vary according to the unit's life-cycle status (Installation, Removal, Transfer, Abandonment). Some cost properties (material costs and labor costs based on labor rates) are supplied by Bentley OpenUtilities Designer as part of the calculations for a design's costs (see Understanding Cost Calculations).
To meet special business needs, Bentley OpenUtilities Designer can be configured to support additional custom properties for design units, materials, and custom costs.
Properties for public units are defined when the company's unit library is loaded into the Bentley OpenUtilities Designer database. Public units typically cannot be modified except by users with administrative privileges.