CadCraft™
Try it out
Menu

Tutorials TakeoffCraft help Getting started

Getting started with TakeoffCraft

What TakeoffCraft does, where it runs, and your first measured and priced item from a PDF plan set.

Written for TakeoffCraft 0.3. The same help is inside the app: press F1.

TakeoffCraft measures PDF plan sets and turns the measurements into a priced estimate. You open the PDFs, give each sheet a scale, make items (a wall type, a floor finish, a fixture), and click on the sheets to take them off. Quantities, costs and the job total update as you go. You can export the estimate as a spreadsheet and a copy of the PDFs with your takeoff drawn in.

If you have done takeoff in other programs, read Coming from other takeoff software next. Some things work differently here.

Where it runs

TakeoffCraft runs in your web browser. Open TakeoffCraft and the screen is ready at once; there is nothing to install.

  • Your PDFs stay on your computer. They are opened by the browser and never uploaded. Saving is a download.
  • It works in current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. See Browsers and computers.
  • It works with no internet connection once you choose Save for offline in the app bar and it says Offline ready. See Working offline.
  • Cloud saving is not available yet, and desktop builds are not out yet.

Your first takeoff in ten steps

This walk-through measures one wall type and prices it. It takes a few minutes on any plan you have.

  1. Choose Open PDFs in the File group of the toolbar (or press ⌘OCtrl+O), pick one or more PDFs, and choose Open. You can also drop the PDFs anywhere on the page. The sheets appear on the left and the first sheet opens in the middle.
  2. Find the sheet's printed scale in its title block or under a drawing title.
  3. Open the Preset list in the Scale group and pick that scale, for example 1/4" = 1'-0". The bar at the bottom of the sheet now says "Scale 1/4" = 1'-0"".
  4. Choose Check (or press DD) and click the two ends of a dimension printed on the drawing. The readout in the status bar at the bottom left should match the printed dimension. If it does not, see Set the scale.
  5. In the Items panel on the right, choose New item, type a name like Interior wall type A, leave the type on Linear (length), and choose Add.
  6. Choose Linear in the toolbar (or press LL).
  7. Click the start of a wall, then each corner along it. Double-click, press ReturnEnter or right-click to finish the run. The run is drawn in the item's color and its length appears next to the item.
  8. In the item editor under Items, type 9'-0" in Height, 0.85 in Material $/LF and 1.20 in Labor $/LF. The Quantities table at the bottom shows the length, the extended material and labor, and the Job total.
  9. Choose Save takeoff (or press ⌘SCtrl+S). Your browser downloads a .takeoff.json file. It holds your items, scales and marks, and reopens on top of the same PDFs.
  10. Choose XLSX in the Export group to download the estimate as a spreadsheet.