Entering Construction Clauses

NOTE-- We retired MacNail in 2000. and replaced it with Goldenseal-- a complete software package for construction and small business, that runs on Macintosh and Windows computers. Goldenseal includes construction spec writing, plus accounting, construction estimating, and project management, In Goldenseal, contract clauses are simple text, with a few text substitution rules that allow for irregular nouns, irregular verbs, and irregular plurals. That makes them much simpler to set up!.

Entering Clause Information

Each line in the Clauses file creates a separate clause in the spec sheet portion of a contract. A clause consists of one or more sentences, depending on how you've set it up.

When a new contract is created, each line in the source file is scanned. A contract clause is then created from whichever line in the Clauses file has the same item code number. If no matching code number is found, an error message is added to the contract.

Coining a Phrase-- with a Quantity

To create a new phrase in the MacNail construction management software, start by creating one or more sentences that fit into the following grammatical structure:

Contractor will fill 115 holes in the wall.

You'd enter this phrase into different columns as follows:

Who-- Contractor
Verb-- fill
HINT: Use the simple present tense for the verb-- 'will' is added automatically when it's required.
Noun-- QTY hole
HINT: Use the singular form of the noun, since Spec Writer will pluralize it automatically.
Details-- in the wall
HINT: You don't need to add a period at the end-- Spec Writer will automatically punctuate each sentence.