Construction Item Categories

General Overview

The Item Category, which is entered on the Construction Item performs the following functions:

• Pre-determining the House Area on the Construction Item. It copies the House Areas from the Construction Item Category (just to save a little extra keying).
• Determining the number of lines per House Area you will provide the person processing Color Chart Selection.
• Classifying Construction Items to be able to group them by function.
• Filtering lists, most commonly:
  • Construction Items
  • Lot Planning Lines
  • Any other table where Construction Items were used to create the information.
• Reporting in summary format.

Construction Items are the main thing that you will work with however it is best to setup Construction Item Categories before you setup Construction Items. You can always change them later if you need.

Examples of Item Category:

Appliances - Dishwasher
Appliances - Stove
Appliances - Stove Hood
Appliances - Fridge
Bathtub
Drain and Water
Sink

Note

Technical Note: Construction Item Categories are implemented using the base table “Item Category” of Business Central. This is a local table, i.e., Construction Item Categories are specific for a Company.

Item Categories - Parent-Child relationships

Tip

Microsoft provides the option to create a hierarchy with Construction Item Categories and this is available through the HomeBuilder app. This is not required and has been reported to be less useful than might first be thought with home builders.

The example provided shows Item Cateogries with no hierarchy however the demo database has examples with the hierarchy in place.

The "super-category” (bold) and the “sub-category" (non-bold). The sub-category inherits House Areas from its super-category.

The way to create an Item Category as a Super-Category is just to create the Item Category

To create a sub-category Item Category, fill in the field "Parent Category" from within the card and the system will automatically change the indentation structure.

Lot Selection Packages (Color Chart) and Item Categories

Other than assisting with filtering; the Item Category is an important factor for Color Chart Selection. You can only have one default line per Item Category per House Area.

In the sample data (above) you will see that there is a category for Bathtub and another for Sink. This is just in order to have individual selections for Color Chart selection.

Note that you can add more Item Categories (on the fly) when you are performing a Color Chart selection, it is just the default that is restricted.

House Areas and Item Categories

In HomeBuilder, Item Categories help to define the House Areas where the Construction Items of this category can be potentially installed.

When an Item Category is assigned to an Item, the applicable House Areas will be inherited by the Item from the Item Category; they can be changed after inheriting the initial selection.

Item Categories - the Recalculate Function

On the Item Category list there is a button "Recalculate". This button scans the list of Item Categories and updates all Items and Model Items with the House Areas that are currently setup in Item Categories.

Note that the system will ask for confirmation of each change which can take many clicks if there are many changes.