A user is requesting the ability to import saved projects in Enercalc when they migrate to ClearCalcs.
“…Our huge library of projects is in Enercalc. Can ClearCalcs read those Enercalc files, by chance?”
Are you looking to import the projects from Enercalc to ClearCalcs for storage/project management purposes or because they are ongoing projects that have yet to be finalized?
Both, we must have both accounts right now just to be able to access our Enercalc archives for projects that we used Enercalc for. Those projects are at various stages since we are just transitioning to ClearCalcs for new projects. Old projects may be done with 1st submittal but need to revisit and add calcs during plan check, or others may be done with the planning process but have an RFI during construction that I need to check a calc for, so it will be over a year before we could comfortably cancel Enercalc and lose easy access to past calculations. That may be a big hurdle to many potential users. We can download our Enercalc files, and if they could be read and opened by ClearCalcs, we would have made the jump sooner.
Are you an Enercalc user migrating to ClearCalcs? Share your insights on how you would like this implemented. Feel free to provide more examples of your use cases if you have any!
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This would be a handy feature. The last 15+ years of our projects are stored in Enercalc files.
It may not be necessary int he short term to be able to import an entire project, but perhaps just the ability to import selected calculations. This comes into play on projects that are through permit, but there are field changes that only affect a couple calculations.
On that front, a quick note, it would be a nice feature to be able to highlight or note which calculations have been updated in these kinds of scenarios. For field changes, it is not necessary to reexport an entire calc set, but it is necessary to export all changed calculations. Right now we have to track the updated calcs by hand, and export either by a group or individually. Totally doable, but if the change occurs at the top of three-story structure, it can be time consuming.
Right now this is the only hurdle for our firm to make the full transition. We have 10+ years of EnerCalc data that we will need access to, but cannot justify the expense of both services for all users. We have seen a number of our older projects having additions or remodels and being able to access those calculations is critical. We also have many projects under construction and designed in EnerCalc that hopefully wont need any modifications, but if they do it would be ideal to access those calculation in CleraCalcs.
These are very helpful insights; thank you both, @Jesse_ZE and @TRChandler!
Enabling file imports from Enercalc will require some discovery on our part. I’ve tabled this in our Feature Requests list, and I’ll keep you posted here when we have more details on what is possible to do here.
While this does seem like a long-term design feature, our firm would also benefit greatly from this ability. I believe some modules (notably the retaining wall module) would need to be revamped before this could work.