Tutorial: Parts List Template

This tutorial shows how to use the Parts List template to count and catalog individual elements in your photos: the windows of a building, the fixtures on a floor plan, or the components of an assembly.

The Parts List template is closely related to the Area-sum template, but the two specialise in different things. Area-sum focuses on adding and subtracting a single area: each element either contributes to a wall area or is taken out of it (a window, a door), optionally with a factor. A Parts List, in contrast, can track several independent classes of parts at once: wire lengths, pipe lengths, window areas, vent counts, all in the same table, with each class summed separately in its own column.

Typical applications of a Parts List:

• Counting and measuring the windows or doors of a building.
• Inventorying outlets, switches, vents or other fixtures on a building plan.
• Cataloguing parts on a technical assembly photo, with their individual sizes.
• Listing inspection items with their location, size and a comment.

The following figure shows an example output table generated from a photo of a family house in which we measured the windows and the rain gutters. Every measured element became one row in the table; per-tag totals are shown at the bottom of each column (the total number of windows and the total length of installed gutters).

Tutorial

Creating a new template

Open the ImageMeter Settings and enter the section Templates and data tables (Fig. 1). Press '+ add template' and choose the parts list template type (Fig. 2). Give the new template a descriptive name, for example Building inventory, and you are taken to the template's configuration screen (Fig. 3).

Defining tags

A tag is a category of part that you want to track. Each measured element will be assigned exactly one tag. All elements that share a tag are listed in the same column of the output table; elements with different tags appear in different columns. In the template configuration, open the tag editor and add the tags you need. For our example we will use:

• window: a rectangular window. We want to know its width and height, so we choose the Rectangle measurement type.
• rain gutter: a horizontal section of gutter. We want the total length of installed gutters, so we choose the Length measurement type.

Each tag has three configurable fields:

• Name: the label that will be used both in the editor (when assigning the tag to an element) and as a column header in the table.
• Measurement type: what is measured for elements with this tag:
  • Count: only the number of elements is recorded; no dimensions.
  • Length: for elements measured as a single length.
  • Rectangle: width and height.
  • Area: a single area value (for rectangles, polygons or circles).
• Column title (optional): overrides the column header if you want it to differ from the tag name. This can be used, for example, to set a short column title that takes less space.

Built-in element properties

Every Parts List template automatically provides three fields on each measured element, in addition to any custom properties you may add:

• Tag: which tag this element represents (chosen from the dropdown).
• Count: an optional integer multiplier (1, 2, 3, …). If a single drawn element should represent several identical parts (e.g. five identical windows in a row), you can mark just one and set the count to 5 instead of drawing them all individually. The count is included in the totals at the bottom of the table.
• Comment: a free-form note that ends up in the table for that element. If the element itself is a text note, its content is automatically used as the default comment.

If you want to track additional information per element (say, the manufacturer of each window, or a status flag such as installed, on order or damaged), define a custom property on the template, just like you would for any other template type. See the Element Properties page for details.

Configuring the table layout

The Parts List template can produce one or more table layouts. Open Edit table layouts in the template configuration and create a new layout, or edit the default one. The most useful settings are:

• Columns for used tags / all tags: should the table only contain columns for tags actually used in the images (compact), or for every tag defined in the template (stable table layout)?
• Item numbering: each row can carry an item number and/or an image number. The item number can restart for each image or run continuously across all images, and the two numbers can be combined into a single label (e.g. 2/3 for the third item in the second image).
• Image row: when set, an image-name row is inserted before each image's elements, so you can tell where each row comes from when you export several images at once.
• Show footer with totals: controls the aggregating row at the bottom (count of items per tag, sum of lengths, sum of areas).
• Include untagged elements: enable this if you do not need tags at all, for example because you simply want every measured area or length listed anyway. When enabled, all areas are automatically gathered in one column and all lengths in a separate column.

Measuring images with the template

Create a new folder for the photos that should appear in the table, and assign your new Parts List template to the folder via the rename dialog (Fig. 5). Every photo you place into the folder will inherit the template automatically.

Inside a photo, draw an element with the appropriate tool (a rectangle for a window, a length measurement for a rain gutter, etc.). Open the element's value-entry panel and set the tag, the optional count, and the optional comment (Fig. 6). If you have defined custom properties on the template, additional input rows appear below the built-in fields.

Repeat for every part you want to include. Elements without a tag remain in the image but do not appear in the exported table (unless you explicitly enabled Include untagged elements in the table layout).

Exporting the table

Once you have tagged all the parts in your images, you can export the table to a file or share it directly from ImageMeter. The export uses the same dialog as for any other template:

1. Choose Share on the folder containing the photos, or select a subset of photos manually.
2. Pick the output format (PDF, CSV, or XLSX).
3. Choose the table layout to use.

The exported table contains one row per tagged element, with one column per tag, plus any custom property columns you defined. If the footer is enabled, a row with per-column totals is appended at the very end of the table.

When to choose Parts List vs. Area-sum

The Parts List and Area-sum templates both produce one row per tagged element, but they target different tasks:

• Use Area-sum when the goal is a single net area: a wall area with windows and doors subtracted, an apartment floor area where balconies count only partially, and so on. Each element can be configured to add or subtract its area from the total, and you can give each element a multiplicative factor (for example, a balcony counted at 0.5×). The result is one focused area calculation with a per-element breakdown that shows how the total is composed.
• Use Parts List for an itemised inventory where every element is a part that you want to record on its own. The measurement type is chosen per tag (count, length, rectangle, or area), so a single Parts List table can mix counted items (vents), measured lengths (cable runs), and measured rectangles (windows with both width and height) in the same export. There is no add/subtract logic and no per-element factor: each row simply describes one part.

If your task boils down to one net area with weighted contributions, Area-sum is the more focused tool. If you need an itemised list with mixed measurement types, or each part is itself the unit of interest, choose Parts List.