Two People, One Takeoff: Multiplayer Blueprint Takeoff

Think about how a big set gets bid today. One estimator has the file. Everybody else waits, or works from a copy that is already out of date, or stands behind them pointing at the screen. If the boss wants to know how it is going, they ask, which interrupts the person measuring and gets an optimistic answer.

This is that, fixed. The takeoff is one document that several people can be inside at the same time, and everybody can see what everybody else is doing.

What you actually do

1. 1
   Share the takeoffOpen Projects, press the share icon on the row, tick the teammate. Now they can open it.
2. 2
   They open itSame takeoff, not a copy. Both of you appear in the top bar as soon as the second person arrives.
3. 3
   Decide how you want to workTake turns is the default. An admin can press Edit together and you both draw at once.
4. 4
   Split the workTwo estimators usually take different sheets. You can see which sheet the other person is on, so you are not doing the same wall twice.
5. 5
   Leave questions on the drawingPin a note where the question is instead of trying to describe the spot in a text message.

Who can open your takeoff

Nothing is shared by default. A takeoff belongs to whoever made it, and a teammate cannot see it until somebody adds them.

The share list says what a share actually does, which matters because people worry about this: a teammate you add can open the takeoff and work it (measure, price, save) and cannot delete it. Ownership does not move. Somebody else opening your takeoff, drawing on it and saving it does not make it theirs.

The office does not need to be added: an admin or the billing seat can already see every takeoff in the company, which is the point of the next section. And an admin can let reps share their own takeoffs with each other, so a rep can get help on one job without being handed the whole book. That is a switch, and it starts off.

Take turns, or work at the same time

There are two ways to work, and the safe one is what you get first.

Take turns is the starting behavior: whoever opened it first is editing, and anybody who joins after that is watching. A watcher cannot change anything by accident (the drawing tools will not save for them), and there is one yellow button that changes that when they need it.

That is a real answer to a real problem and not just a safety rail. It is how somebody looks at a takeoff without disturbing the person doing it. And it is why the person measuring does not have to worry about who else is in there.

When taking turns is the wrong shape (a deadline, two estimators, one set), an admin presses Edit together and the lock is gone. The yellow Take over button disappears from everybody’s screen, because there is no longer anything to take over.

Seeing what each other are doing

This is the part people do not expect to care about and then will not give up.

Every teammate in the takeoff has a colored cursor with their name on it, and their color is theirs: the same person is the same color on everybody’s screen, every day. While they are drawing, the shape they are dragging out shows up on your screen as a dashed outline in their color, before they have finished it. When they finish, it lands as a real measurement.

And which sheet they are on

On a real set that is the more useful half. Two people rarely want the same sheet (one takes the floor plans, the other takes the foundation), and the question is not what your teammate is drawing, it is which sheet they have already done.

Open the pages preview and every sheet wears the initials of whoever is standing on it. Your own sheet is the highlighted one; an avatar on a tile is somebody else. Below, the foundation sheet is carrying SW, so there is no need to ask what he picked up, and no chance of both of you measuring it.

That is what splitting a set looks like in practice, and it is the difference between two people helping each other and two people getting in each other’s way.

• You can tell at a glance whether somebody is working or reading, which is the question you were going to interrupt them to ask.
• Two estimators split a set by sheet instead of taking turns with the file, and neither has to keep asking where the other one is up to.
• A senior estimator can watch a new one work and catch a mistake in the first ten minutes instead of at the review.
• Training stops being a conversation about how you would do it and becomes watching it get done.

It is honest about its own limits, too. If the connection drops, the bar says so and tells you presence is paused, rather than showing you a room that quietly went stale. And the more people are in a takeoff, the less often each cursor is broadcast, so a crowded room stays smooth instead of flooding everybody’s screen.

A manager checking in

The reason this is worth having on a Tuesday with no deadline: somebody who is responsible for the number can look at the work while it is being done, instead of after.

An admin or the office can see every takeoff the company has: who owns it, how many sheets, how much has been measured, and when it was last worked. Opening one puts them in the room. In take-turns mode they are read-only, so checking on a job cannot disturb it, and the estimator can see they are there. It is not a spy hole: presence is mutual by design, which is what makes it usable between people who work together.

What that changes in practice is when problems get found. A wall height that was never set, a rate nobody verified, a condition measured against the wrong sheet: those are cheap on Tuesday and expensive after the bid goes out. A manager who can look does not need a status meeting, and does not have to take "nearly done" as an answer.

And if the manager sees something worth fixing, they take over and fix it, or turn on editing together and fix it beside them. Nothing has to be exported, emailed, or explained over the phone first.

Talking about it

There is no chat box in the takeoff, and no voice call. That is deliberate, and worth being straight about: your crew already has phones and a group chat, and a chat window nobody watches is worse than no chat window.

What the software fixes is the hard part of that phone call: both of you looking at the same thing. "The gable over the entry" is a sentence that costs five minutes on the phone and no time at all when you can both see the cursor pointing at it.

For anything that does not need a phone call, notes go on the drawing. Pin one to the exact spot and type the question. It syncs to everybody in the takeoff like anything else, it is still there tomorrow, and it prints on the marked-up sheets you send out, so a question about the plan lives on the plan instead of in somebody’s messages.

What happens when you both change the same thing

Worth knowing before you trust it with a deadline, because this is the question that decides whether people relax.

• Two people on different sheets or different conditions never collide at all. That is most of the time, and it is what splitting a set looks like.
• Two people changing the same thing at once: the last save wins. The takeoff does not stop to ask, and nothing is lost from anywhere else.
• Your undo is yours. It steps back through your own work, and it will not reach across and remove a measurement a teammate drew while you were working.

That last one sounds small and is the difference between usable and not. In a shared document where undo is global, one person pressing it a few times can wipe out somebody else’s afternoon, so people stop pressing it, and then they stop trusting the document.

Turning it on

Taking turns needs nothing switched on: share a takeoff with somebody and you already have presence, cursors, and a read-only seat with a Take over button.

Everybody editing at once is the beta, and it is off until an admin turns it on. Settings names it, says what it does, and says what it replaces.

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.