You paid for the shop drawings when you did the takeoff — then paid a drafting service to draw the same wall again. Per-sheet fees, revision rounds, someone else's backlog. Stop paying for the wall twice.
Nobody makes you draw a trash enclosure. I draw them anyway. On one recent job the sheets totalled 12,624 units and the order was 11,485 — the gap was 1,139 corners counted twice, and nine percent of the order rode on one line of reconciliation.
The 20% rule works until it doesn't. Today's projects mix bullnose, split-face, colors, and multiple widths — and 'halves' isn't one line item anymore. Here's the actual list of half-block SKUs a modern job needs.
SketchUp draws boxes — it doesn't know coursing, bond, or special units. Here's why building masonry shop drawings in SketchUp by hand is so much work, and what should replace it.
It's not the architect's drawing — it's yours, and you can't lay a block until it's approved. Here's what a CMU shop drawing has to show: coursing, special shapes, reinforcing, control joints.
The masonry shop drawing workflow everyone uses: export the rendering, drop it in Bluebeam, label every opening and course by hand. The drawing should label itself.
A half block costs about two-thirds of a full one — your most expensive block per inch of wall. Miss the count and your bid is short, in the one direction you can't claw back.
Every estimating demo looks good out in the flat. The corner is the one place area math can't fake. Here's a one-minute test you can run on anything you're using now.
Corner blocks carry a premium, and the software already rendered them on screen. So why does the takeoff still miss them — and why am I building corner units by hand for every banded color?
I've been doing masonry takeoffs for years. I use spreadsheets and count everything by hand — because the tools that exist don't model masonry. They model rectangles.