User Interface

The rectangular grid of rows and columns described in Breinz BOQ is only one part of the Breinz Costing user interface. The entire interface is as following:

This is the layout used in Breinz 1.07. The key components are as follows:

Title Bar - contains the version of Breinz you are using, name of the page you are looking at, help button, Admin Settings button, and user settings area.

Ribbon Tabs / Modules - the top level menu items. This consists of all the Modules you have access to. The choices can change depending on the plan you purchased. Modules that are not part of your plan are disabled and are grayed out.

To access most capabilities in Breinz, you click on one of these ribbon tabs. For each tab a different ribbon will be displayed. In the picture above, The cost estimate ribbon is selected, and the Items (BOQ) is selected. This tab provides access to the most common Breinz capabilities.

Ribbon – a collection of Breinz capabilities organized into groups corresponding to ribbon tab / selected module. For example, the Cost Estimate ribbon displayed above is organized into Enterprise, Links, Items, Views, and Others groups.

Each group consists of one or more icons corresponding to some capabilities in Breinz.

For example, to add a New Item to your Bill of Quantity, click on the Add Item Icon in the Items group on the Cost Estimate ribbon. We use the following abbreviation for this sequence of steps: Cost Estimate >  Items > Items Group > Add Item

In a similar manner, you can delete an Item by selecting the item, Cost Estimate >  Items > Items Group > Delete; the selected Item(s) deleted and the page refreshed to reflect the changes.

Also items can be Copied, Pasted, Duplicated, Switched On or Off using Cost Estimate >  Items > Items Group There are also shortcuts for some icons. For example, Right-Click on an Item to see a quick menu of options.

To get some idea of the purpose of an icon, place the mouse pointer over that icon (without clicking) and a tool tip will appear to provide some information about the icon.

Some groups are accessible by clicking on a button. E.g. clicking on the Views button on the Cost Estimate Ribbon, presents a new sets of Icons and options available to views to choose from.

Switching Between Projects - By clicking on the Projects Tab on the left Ribbon (Called Navigation), you can switch quickly between Projects.

By Clicking on a Project / Costing, the Information you see on all the pages are only related to that Project.

So, Switching between your projects, Costings, or Templates are one click away.