Tutorials TakeoffCraft help Walkthroughs
Snap to the drawing's lines
Points jump onto the PDF's own linework while you measure or calibrate: ends, midpoints, crossings or anywhere on a line, with a marker that says which.
Written for TakeoffCraft 0.4. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
Most plan sets are vector PDFs: their walls and edges are real lines, not pixels. While you measure, TakeoffCraft snaps your clicks onto those lines, so a run starts exactly at a wall's corner and a calibration reads the dimension the drafter drew, not the pixel you hit.
Snap is on when you start. Turn it off and on with Snap in the status bar or F3F3; the setting is kept in this browser (it is also under Settings).
What it snaps to
When the pointer comes within about 10 screen pixels of a line, a marker shows where the click will land, with its name:
| Marker | Name | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Square | End | The end of a line, or a corner where lines meet. A curve's two ends count; the points along it do not. |
| Triangle | Midpoint | The middle of a straight line. |
| Cross | Intersection | Where two lines cross, or where one ends on another. |
| Hourglass | On the line | The nearest point on a line, when no end, midpoint or crossing is close. |
The nearest end, midpoint or crossing wins. Only when none is close does the point go onto the line itself. Zoom in to choose between points that sit close together: the 10 pixels are screen pixels, so at a higher zoom they cover less of the sheet.
Where it works
Snap works in Linear, Area, Circle, Cut-out, Calibrate and Check, and when you drag a selected mark's corner. It also places arc points. Count, Auto count and pasting are not snapped.
A snapped point wins over the 45° snap of ⇧Shift: to draw at 45° away from the lines, turn Snap off with F3F3 first.
Sheets it cannot snap on
- Scanned sheets are pictures with no lines to snap to. The status bar says "This sheet has no lines to snap to (a scanned page is a picture)." and points go where you click.
- Very large drawings: snapping reads up to 400,000 line segments per sheet. On a sheet with more, it says so and snaps to the first ones only.
- Text is not snapped to, unless the PDF draws its letters as lines (some plotters do).
The sheet's lines are read the first time you open it, in the background; a big sheet can take a second before the markers appear.