🎯 Objective
To design or customize the report templates to suit your individual needs.
⚠️ Note before you start
This section may appear to be quite a daunting process at first as it requires use of many of the standard 3D CAD functions rarely used when modelling roofs and generating estimates.
It also requires extensive knowledge in the use of MS Word and Excel if they are to become your standard report generators.
It is recommended you are very familiar with the workings of the respective software before returning back to this point.
🔀 Two separate template workflows
There are two distinctly separate processes for creating report templates from AppliCad software:
The CAD template (used for 25 years and still supported)
Seamless integration with MS Word or MS Excel for report generation
🔎 How Roof Wizard chooses which template to use
When output reports are created, the software first looks for a Microsoft Word template of the required name form (for example QuotationLetter).
The file it is looking for must be saved in either:
..\User folder, or
..\Corporate
…and it must be named without spaces, as either:
QuotationLetter.DOC (Word Document), or
QuotationLetter.DOT (Word Template)
🧩 Required Microsoft Office file format
The file format must be Microsoft Office 1997–2003 compatible — that is, no XLTS or DOCX formats.
This ensures backwards compatibility for all users.
✅ What happens if a Word template is found (or not found)
If the software finds the DOC or DOT with the defined name, it will use it.
If it does not find a Microsoft Word template, it will use the AppliCad default CAD template for QuotationLetter, which is saved in the AppliCad database file RoofWiz.dab.
This ensures all existing default CAD templates will continue to work as they do now when the software is updated by new releases.
✍️ Why use Microsoft Word templates?
Creating a template in MS Word allows for more creativity in design, and many operators may be more familiar with Microsoft Word than the CAD functions.
The use of Word Templates is described later in this section.
Using a Word template, you can include as much or as little information as required for your projects.
If you plan to use Word templates exclusively, you may want to go directly to that section below.
However, a lot of useful information is described in the CAD template section.