Earthwork and spot elevations

TakeoffCraft measures what is drawn on a sheet. Earthwork needs a ground surface, so it is shared with CivilCraft, which builds surfaces from points, grades them and works out cut and fill and haul.

Simple excavation here

For a footprint dug to one depth, an area item with a depth is enough: the volume is area × depth. The general contractor trade pack has a bulk excavation item (bank volume, loose volume and truck loads) and a utility trench item (excavation, bedding and backfill by length and depth).

Spot elevations for CivilCraft

1. Set the site sheet's scale.
2. Make a Count item, for example "Existing grade", and click each spot elevation on the sheet.
3. Select a mark and type its Elevation in the Selected mark panel: 102.5, 102'-6" or 31.24 m. Negative and zero elevations are fine.
4. Open the Export menu and choose Spot elevations. You get a points file (.csv) with Point, Northing, Easting, Elevation and Description, one row per marked point of the open sheet.
5. Open that file in CivilCraft (see Import points). It builds the surface from the points (Build a surface); from there it compares surfaces and gives cut and fill (Volumes).

Northing and easting are the sheet's own coordinates in feet, measured from the page's corner at its scale: distances and volumes between the points are true, but they are not your site's survey coordinates. Move them onto the site's coordinates in CivilCraft when you need to.