I am trying to get the correct number of clips and screws with my metal panels. Defining Panels and Fasteners.

Most of our users are totally focused on the difficulty of generating cutting lists for metal panels, usually at the expense of other essential items that make a proper roof job.
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Trim, accessories and of course fasteners.
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You can have all the panels on site, but without fasteners, nothing can be done.
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Roof Wizard will count every nut, bolt and screw, even a few clips, IF you have correctly defined them.
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Below is a tip on how to set them up.

The setup of fasteners can be handled in one of 2 ways for metal panels.
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Typically, for through-fastened panels, you would simply specify a fastener (under Set Up > Fasteners) and then link this fastener to a metal panel.
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When you define the panel, select the fastener that goes with that panel.
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Typically there are no other accessory or fastener items required to complete the installation, so this is the quick and easy way to get the correct fasteners with the required panel.
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If the panel requires fasteners AND clips and sealant (for example), then you are best to add them to the panel as an accessory.
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From this it is obvious that when you define a panel, you need fastners already defined to add them to the panel definition (a “chicken and egg” situation - except we know know we need fasteners first, so you must define them first - refer to the doco for defining fasteners).
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As has been previously highlighted (if you have read the rest of our help doco) all the materials are linked via the product code.
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So pay attention to this - every unique product MUST have a unique product code. If a range of products uses the same fastener, then they will be aggregated together because of the common element - the product code.
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It is always wise to have the customer set the number of fasteners per Box to 1, so that they can see exactly how many fasteners the software is producing at the end.
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If you put a [Fasteners per Box] value is > 1, then the software “rounds into number of boxes” and it is very hard to work out what’s going on.
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Examples of panels like this are as per below:
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(note, this is a Wall Panel, thus the reason they’re fastened in the valley of the profile. You wouldn’t want to do this on a roof, lest the holes created by the fastener let the water in!)
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However, if a Metal Panel is using a clip and screw system (such as a concealed clip/fastener for a Standing Seam profile) then you would instead create the clip and any fastener(s) it required using the Accessories option at the bottom of the Metal-Panels dialog.
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Examples of panels like this are as per below: (In this instance, the “clip” could actually be a “rail” and so the estimation method in the dialog above could be 1, identifying one foot of rail required for every 1 foot of panel) or the metric equivalent.
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Once set up, you would then apply this panel to a roof.
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Here I’ve drawn a 5’ x 10’ roof and applied the panels to the roof using Gen-Panels.
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See examples of output for Through-Fastened (option 1 above) versus Clipped (option 2 – using Accessories):
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Note that the Fasteners don’t display in the left dialog (when specified as a Fastener to the Metal Panel – not sure why, they never have.
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Whereas if they are specified as an Accessory (and weren’t set up as a Fastener before) then they WILL display here.
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Going through to the Costing > Supply Only screen, the outcome for both options above is as follows:
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So, for option 1 the fasteners display as 158 fasteners, which is 59.17 l/ft x 1.3333 (16” wide) = 78.89 sqft. Multiplied by 2, this is 157.78 fasteners, which the software calculates as boxes (set to 1, hopefully) which in this case creates 158 in total.
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For option 2, no fasteners are calculated as we simply entered the clip and its associated fasteners directly under Accessories, without first specifying either of them as a Fastener.
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We could’ve done both and if we had so then these 2 options would appear under the Fasteners group instead of the Accessories group.
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Calculations, again based on our example above, are as follows:

And that’s about it.
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Fasteners are pretty simple, and indeed the only real value that affects the overall calculation is the Tile Waste dialog, where the [Fastener Waste %] and [Roundup] can be specified separately.
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If the value the customer is getting is wrong, maybe just go to Set Up > Set Up Pay Rates > Tile Waste Factors and make sure these options are both set to 0.
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Metal panel customers typically won’t use these fields as they’re hidden away, so for them to generate any extra waste you would simply over-estimate, by perhaps putting in 2.2 fasteners per sqft instead of 2.
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