Blueprint Takeoff: Measuring a Plan and Pricing It

Every takeoff tool on the market lets you draw on a plan and add up what you drew. The screens below walk through doing exactly that. The part worth paying attention to is what happens to the number afterward, because that is where most estimating software stops and the spreadsheet starts.

What you actually do

Five steps. On a plan you have measured before, this is a few minutes of work.

1. 1
   Drop the plan inDrag the PDF onto the page. A whole set comes in at once and each sheet gets its own tile you can click between.
2. 2
   Set the scaleClick the two ends of a dimension that is printed on the drawing and type what it says. That is the whole calibration.
3. 3
   Pick what you are measuringChoose a condition from your trade’s list. The right drawing tool arms itself, so you are not deciding whether this one is an area or a line.
4. 4
   Trace itClick around the walls, the slab, the run of footing. The number appears next to the shape as you go.
5. 5
   Compile the estimateThe measurements become priced rows using your rate book. From there it is one button to a bid.

Load the plan

Drop a PDF onto the page. Multi-page sets come in whole and each sheet gets a tile in the navigator. The project takes its name from the file and can be renamed. Nothing gets installed, and the same takeoff opens on any device signed into your company, so a takeoff started at the desk can be finished on a laptop at home.

Set the scale off something printed on the sheet

Click the two ends of a dimension that is written on the drawing, then type what it says. Two clicks and a number.

You can also just pick the scale off the title block, and the software will let you. It is not the default, and here is why. Somebody printed that set "fit to page" at some point: a front desk, an architect emailing a revision, a builder printing it small to fit an 11x17. The sheet still says 1/4 inch = 1 foot in the corner, and it is no longer at that scale. A dimension that is drawn on the sheet traveled with it through every one of those reprints. That is the only thing on the page that cannot lie to you.

Pick what you are measuring, not what you are drawing

Conditions come out of your own trade’s list: exterior walls, gables, crawl space, garage ceilings, deductions for windows and doors, roof slopes by pitch. Click one and the right tool arms itself.

That is a small thing that saves a lot of small mistakes. In most takeoff software you choose a tool first (polygon, line, count) and then remember what you meant by it later. Here you say "exterior walls" and the software knows exterior walls are measured as a run and multiplied by a height. You are naming scope, which is what you were thinking about anyway.

Trace it

Trace the heated envelope and the software asks the one thing the plan cannot tell it: the wall height. Then it turns the run into square feet on every shape of that condition.

The arithmetic is printed next to each shape on the sheet: the run, the height, and the square feet they make. You can check the number by looking at it rather than by trusting it, and so can whoever reviews the bid on Monday.

Both trades total on their own in the panel: 1,692 square feet of wall and an 836 square foot slab here. They stay separate on purpose. A job that pours concrete and sprays foam is two scopes, two crews and two rates, and one blended number helps nobody who has to schedule it or price it.

Ask the sheet a question

The assistant reads the sheet you are looking at, along with what you have already measured. Ask it what is on the drawing.

It is built to tell you what it cannot see. It separates what is legible on the sheet from what it is working out, and it is instructed never to invent a dimension or a count. That limit is the whole point: an assistant that guesses confidently is worse than no assistant, because you cannot tell the guesses from the readings. You still check the drawing. It is a second pair of eyes, not a second estimator.

Compile it into a priced estimate

The measurements become line items priced from your own rate book: your numbers, not a national average and not a starter price list you never agreed to.

Waste is folded into the billed quantity where the trade works that way. The concrete line below carries the shop’s 2.5% and says so on the row. It is not broken out as its own line, on purpose: a waste line on a customer’s quote is an invitation to ask for it to be taken off. It is not a thing you are selling. It is part of what the concrete costs to place.

The banner at the top names anything still unresolved: a rate nobody has verified, a line with no price on it, a condition with no height. It tells you before you send it rather than after.

What happens to the number next

This is the part that is not standard. Create Bid turns the estimate into a numbered bid on your letterhead: one bid, or one per condition if the builder wants the garage quoted separately. The customer signs it online. The signed bid becomes a job carrying that same number, that same scope and that same list of lines, and it keeps the number through scheduling, the change orders, the invoice and the payment.

Count the places a quantity normally gets re-typed on a job: the takeoff, the quote, the job folder, the schedule, the invoice, the accounting file. Every one of those is a chance for a digit to move, and the one that moved is usually found by the customer. Here the measurement is typed once, by the person who measured it. Everywhere it shows up afterward, it is the same record, not a copy of one.

Every screen on this page is the software running, captured from a demo workspace. The builders, addresses and contacts in it are invented; the plan is one we drew. More at Opulence Built.