This article will help you understand the use of the Preview button available on the estimate screen.

While creating a BOQ, there can be a lot of items added to the list and those items can have n number of parent-child relationships i.e. can have a lot of sub-items and sub-sub-items as well. At one point it might get confusing for the user to understand the hierarchy and have a structured BOQ created.

So for the ease of viewing the BOQ the ‘Preview' button will come in handy. Preview is a non-editable version of the BOQ created.

When the toggle is switched OFF, the list can be edited and will have all the options for adding, editing, deleting, updating, canceling, creating a nested item, opening the properties panel and preferencing the item.

The text can even be wrapped if it exceeds the column width in a BOQ and will only work when the preview toggle is switched off.

When the toggle is switched ON, the view will be collapsed and you will only be able to see the final BOQ without the edit operators above the items making the list more cleaner and structured.

The Preview toggle will not only come in handy for viewing the BOQ list but also while exporting a pdf or an excel. You can decide on the way the BOQ should look after being exported.

If the Preview button is switched OFF -

The exported BOQ will have the items listed in a parent-child relationship and will have the column headers every time an item is nested.

If the preview button is switched ON -

The exported BOQ will have the items listed in a parent-child relationship but will be much cleaner and easy to understand. This is the preferred way of exporting a BOQ in PDF format because this aligns with the standard format as well.