Building Reusable Assemblies

This article covers the three ways Stimaro helps you build items faster by reusing work: saving item sheets as templates, dropping a predefined crew onto an item, and rolling sub-items into a parent item with Combines.

Three tools for faster assembly

• Templates — save a complete item sheet to reuse across projects.
• Crews — a predefined bundle of resources you drop onto an item in one action.
• Combines — link a separate item as a sub-item so its cost rolls up into a parent.

Templates

Any fully costed item can be saved as a template and reused on future projects. To save one, right-click the item in the Items list, choose Save as Template, give it a descriptive name, and click Save. It's then available in every project.

To use a template, click From Template in the Items toolbar (or on the empty-state screen when a project has no items yet). The Import from Template dialog lists your templates with their name, item number, description, and resource count. Pick one and it's added to your project, ready to customize.

For the full workflow around building a marine and heavy civil template library, see Building your marine item library.

If an imported template references a rate code that doesn't exist in the current project, that resource won't price automatically — add the rate on the Rates tab, or enter a manual rate on the resource line.

Crews

A crew is a saved bundle of resources — any mix of Labor, Equipment, Rental, Material, Subcontract, and Other — that you drop onto an item in one step. It's ideal for field crews you use repeatedly, like a crane operator, crane, barge, and laborers for a pile-driving operation.

Build the crew once (in Rates):

1. On the Rates tab, click the Crews sub-tab.
2. Click + Add to create a crew; give it a code and description.
3. Use Add Member to pick resources from your rate tables and set each member's quantity per day.

The crew is saved and available across all projects.

Add the crew to an item:

1. On the Items tab, select the item.
2. In the resource panel, click the button beside Add Resource that adds a crew's resources to the item.
3. In the dialog, select the crew (each option shows its code, description, and member count).
4. Enter the crew quantity — for example, 5 if the crew works 5 days on this item.
5. The dialog previews how many resource rows will be inserted. Click Add crew.

Each crew member is inserted as its own resource row with quantities already calculated, and you can edit any row afterward. If no crews appear, you'll be prompted to build one first under Rates → Crews.

Combines

Combines lets you link one item as a sub-item of another, so the sub-item's cost rolls up into the parent automatically. This is useful when one item is built from several smaller ones — for example, a concrete cap that references a separate rebar item and a forming item.

The Combines section appears below the resource grid when you have an item selected.

Add a combined item:

1. Select the parent item on the Items tab.
2. Scroll past the resource grid to the Combines section and click Add Combined Item.
3. Pick the item to roll in from the list. It appears in the Combines list with a combine factor of 1 and its rolled-up cost shown.

The combine factor controls how much of the sub-item's cost is added to the parent. A factor of 1 includes 100% of the sub-item's total; a factor of 2 doubles it before rolling up — useful when one unit of the parent requires two units of the sub-assembly. Click the factor value to edit it, type the new number, and press Enter.

The parent's total cost equals its own resource costs plus each sub-item's total times its combine factor. This cascades correctly through multiple levels (a grandparent combining a parent that itself combines children).

To remove a combined item, click the trash icon next to it in the Combines list — this removes only the link, not the sub-item itself.

On the bid sheet: combined sub-items don't appear as their own bid rows — only the parent links to the bid, and the parent's rolled-up unit cost already includes the sub-items. This is intentional, so you don't double-count.