Yingzao Fashi
"Yingzao Fashi" included building codes and regulations, accounting information, descriptions of construction materials, and classification of crafts. In its 34 chapters, the book outlined units of measurement, and the construction of moats, fortifications, stonework, and woodwork. For the latter, it included specifications for making bracketing units with inclined arms and joints for columns and beams. It also provided specifications for wood carving, drilling, sawing, bamboo work, tiling, wall building, and decoration. The book contained recipes for decorative paints, glazes, and coatings, also listing proportions for mixing mortars used in masonry. brickwork, and manufacture of glazed tiles, illustrating practices and standards with drawings. His book outlined structural carpentry in great detail, providing standard dimensional measurements for all components used;. here he developed a standard eight-grade system for sizing timber elements, known as the "cai-fen" system of units, which could be universally applied in buildings. About 8% of the book was derived from pre-existing written material on architecture, while the majority of the book documented the inherited traditions of craftsmen and architects. The "Yingzao Fashi" provided a full glossary of technical terms that included mathematical formulae, building proportions, and construction techniques, and discussed the implications of the local topography for construction at a particular site. He also estimated the monetary costs of hiring laborers of different skill levels from various crafts on the basis of a day's work, in addition to the price of the materials they would need and according to the season in which they were to be employed.