Takeoff

Takeoff is where you measure quantities straight off your drawings — lengths, areas, volumes and counts — and push them into your estimate as priced line items. Measure once, and a change on the drawings flows through to your pricing instead of being retyped.

Cost codes first. Every takeoff item is tied to a cost code, so make sure your codes are set up before you start (see Jobs & Job Cost).

How takeoff fits together

• Takeoff is done against a project and a specific estimate — you choose which estimate you’re measuring for.
• A document set is a named, versioned collection of drawings (e.g. “Working Drawings — Rev A”). You can supersede a set when newer drawings arrive.
• Each drawing in a set is a page you measure on, with its own scale.
• A takeoff item is a named quantity (tied to a cost code) — you draw measurements on the drawings and they add up against the item.
• When you’re done, you export takeoff items to the estimate, where they become line items you can price.

Step 1 — Open takeoff and pick the estimate

Open the estimate for the job and select the Takeoff you’re measuring for. Everything you measure is held against that estimate, so you can keep separate takeoffs for separate revisions or options.

Step 2 — Create a document set and upload drawings

1. Create a document set (the folder button in the sidebar’s Document set heading; a project with no sets yet shows a Create a document set button instead) — give it a name, a version/revision (e.g. “Rev A”, “v2”) and the drawing date. A new revision of drawings you already have keeps the same name: pick it from the list under the name field and the version fills in with the next revision (“Rev C” becomes “Rev D”, “3” becomes “4”) — change it if the drawings say otherwise. Nothing is suggested for a version that doesn’t end in a letter or a number (“IFC”), so type that one yourself. Set the default scale the drawings are at (and a sheet size for image uploads): every page you upload into the set starts at that scale, so a forty-sheet set at 1:100 needs no per-page setting. A PDF’s sheet size is read from the file. You can change the defaults later under Manage, and tick Apply to the pages already in this set to rescale them all.
2. Upload your drawings into the set. You can upload PDFs or images (JPG, PNG, etc.), and multi-page PDFs are split into individual drawing pages named “file (Page 1)”, “(Page 2)” and so on. You can upload several files at once. Uploading into a set that already has drawings adds the new pages after the existing ones; nothing already measured is ever replaced (use Swap a drawing for that).

The new set opens on the takeoff screen as soon as you create it, so each drawing appears behind the upload window as it finishes converting.

The set’s files are stored in the Documents app behind the scenes, so your drawings live alongside the rest of the job’s documents.

While your PDFs convert

A drawing set isn’t measurable the moment the upload finishes. Each PDF page is first converted into a drawing image you can measure on, and a large sheet takes a moment. CortexPM does this in the background, so on a forty-sheet working-drawing set you’re not left waiting on a frozen screen — you can see where it’s up to and start work as sheets become ready.

What you’ll see:

• In the upload panel each file’s status becomes Converting… once the transfer finishes, and a banner reads Converting N PDFs to drawings. You can keep this open, or close it — the drawings will appear when they’re ready.
• While you’re creating a new set, the Documents tab is labelled Documents (Converting…). Open Set still works — it opens the set now and the rest of the sheets land as they finish.
• On the takeoff toolbar a progress chip reads Converting page N of M with a bar beside it. Before the page count is known it reads Preparing drawings….
• Pages appear one by one as they’re ready, not all at the end, so you can start measuring on sheet 1 while sheet 40 is still converting.

Tip: you don’t have to wait on the screen. The takeoff screen keeps itself up to date while anything is still converting, so you can close the upload window, go back to the job, and the drawings will be sitting there when you return.

Watch out: if a large set takes more than five minutes, the upload panel shows PDF conversion timed out. It may still finish — refresh shortly. The conversion is usually still running — refresh the takeoff screen and the sheets will appear as they finish. A file that genuinely can’t be converted reports the error against that file instead.

Finding your way around the pages

The drawing dropdown on the toolbar lists every page in the set. A page you’ve measured on shows a ● and the number of measurements on it (e.g. ● A-101 Ground Floor · 12), so you can see at a glance which sheets still need doing. Pages that are still converting are greyed out until they’re ready. PageUp and PageDown step to the previous and next page without reaching for the mouse.

The page strip

Under the toolbar, a strip of thumbnails shows every page in the open set: the open page is ringed, each thumbnail carries its page number and how many measurements it holds, and beneath it sits the sheet number and title. Click a thumbnail to open that page. The strip scrolls to keep the open page in view, and the images button in the toolbar’s page group hides or shows it (remembered on this browser).

Sheet numbers and titles are read from the drawing’s title block when a PDF converts, so a set uploaded today names its pages “S002 — General Notes” rather than “drawings (Page 3)”. The reading is a starting point: under Manage → Documents, the pencil beside each page’s title lets you correct the number and title by hand. Pages converted before this existed have no reading until they are re-uploaded or swapped; their thumbnails appear the first time the strip asks for them.

Rotating a page

Some sheets come through on their side — a portrait detail in a landscape set, or a scan the architect turned the wrong way. The two rotate buttons on the toolbar turn the page a quarter turn anticlockwise or clockwise, and a small 90° / 180° / 270° tag on the clockwise button tells you when a page is being shown turned. CortexPM remembers the rotation per page, so it opens the same way next time.

Rotation is display only. Your measurements turn with the sheet and stay on the same drawing lines whichever way it is turned, and no value changes. Labels and notes stay upright and pinned over the same spot on the drawing, and you can draw, calibrate and mark up on a rotated page exactly as on an unrotated one. Both PDF exports show the page the way you have it turned.

Managing document sets

• Switch which set is the current, active one you’re working in. The set’s drawings load straight away, and CortexPM remembers which sheet you last had open in each set, so flicking between a superseded set and the current one lands you back on the same page.
• Update a set’s name, version or details. A set is known by its name and version together: the architectural, structural and hydraulic sets can all be at Rev C in the same estimate, and Rev D of the architecturals keeps the same name with a new version. The only thing refused is a second set with the same name and the same version.
• Supersede a set when a newer revision arrives — see When a new revision arrives below. The old set is kept for history, but it is archived: its drawings are hidden and the measurements on them no longer count toward any item total.
• Swap a drawing to replace a single page’s file with an updated one while keeping all the measurements already drawn on it — handy for minor drawing revisions. Before you pick the replacement file, record the New Revision (e.g. “Rev B”, “Issue C”), the Revision Date and any Notes (e.g. “Coordinated with structural”), then Select File.
• View swap history on a drawing that has been replaced — every swap keeps the old filename, its revision and the date, so when a quantity is queried six months later you can show which sheet it was measured off.
• Delete a drawing or a set you no longer need.

When a new revision arrives

Drawings change. When Rev B of the architecturals lands you don’t start the takeoff again:

1. Upload Rev B as its own set with the same name and the next revision (the New Set form suggests it). Let the pages finish converting.
2. Open the cog on Rev A and, under Revision status, choose Supersede this set…. The dialog picks Rev B as the replacement (the newest set with the same name; change it if you need to) and shows, sheet by sheet, what carrying the takeoff across will do.
3. Leave Carry the measurements across ticked and confirm.

Sheets match by page number: everything measured on Rev A sheet 3 is copied onto Rev B sheet 3, holes with their slabs, markers with their numbers. A Rev B sheet nobody has measured on yet takes the Rev A sheet’s scale and rotation, so the copied figures read the same; a sheet that already has measurements keeps its own scale and the copies are recomputed against it. A Rev A sheet with no matching page in Rev B keeps its measurements archived on Rev A — the dialog tells you how many before you confirm. Markups (clouds, notes) stay with the revision they were written about.

Afterwards Rev B is the current set with the carried takeoff on it, ready for you to adjust what actually changed, and Rev A is superseded: its drawings are hidden and its measurements count toward nothing, so an item’s total is never Rev A plus Rev B. Made a mistake? Bring back into use on the superseded set restores it, figures and all.

You can also supersede without carrying — untick the box — which simply archives the old takeoff.

Comparing two revisions

Compare (the overlapping-pages button in the toolbar’s display group) lays another revision of the sheet over the one you have open: the current drawing in blue, the other in red, so unchanged linework reads near-black and anything that moved or was added shows in one colour or the other. The panel at the top-left picks the other revision. It defaults to the same page number in the latest superseded set of the same name, keeps that pairing as you page through, and offers:

• Both / Current / Other views (the \ key cycles them) and an opacity slider for each.
• Two points: click two reference points on the current drawing, then the same two on the other. That fixes the offset, rotation and scale in one go, and the alignment is remembered for that pair of pages.
• Move: drag the other revision into place by hand. The arrow keys nudge it a pixel at a time (Shift for ten) whether or not Move is on. Reset puts it back as uploaded.

Compare is a view: nothing about it is exported, and measuring carries on underneath it.

Deleting a page that has measurements on it

Measurements are never thrown away by accident. The page table shows a blue count on every page that carries measurements, and what Delete does depends on it:

• No measurements: the page and its drawing are deleted after a quick confirm.
• Measurements on it: a dialog tells you how many, across how many items, and offers to keep them on a blank sheet. The drawing is removed, the page stays in the set as a white sheet with every measurement still on it (marked Blank sheet in the page table and the page selector), and the totals are untouched. Swap a drawing in later and the measurements are right where you left them. If you really do want the lot gone, the dialog also offers Delete the page and its measurements, behind its own confirm.

A document set can’t be deleted while any of its pages carry measurements. The message tells you how many pages and measurements are in the way: blank those pages, delete the measurements, or delete the takeoff items first. Deleting a takeoff item does remove its measurements, so its confirm states how many there are and on how many pages.

Swapping a drawing never touches the measurements, but the swap form reminds you how many are on the page, so you know to check they still line up on the new revision.

Step 3 — Set the scale

Before you measure, calibrate each drawing so distances are real-world accurate.

1. Open a drawing and click the scale readout in the toolbar, beside the page counter. It shows the page’s current scale and sheet size (“1:100 A1”). The Set Drawing Scale panel opens. (A page starts at its document set’s default scale; this is for the one sheet that differs, or for calibrating.)

When the title block states a scale that differs from the page’s, the toolbar readout shows a small amber dot and the Set Drawing Scale panel offers Use 1:N in one click. It is a suggestion read from the drawing’s text, never applied on its own: a sheet with details at several scales, or one marked “AS SHOWN”, gets no suggestion. 2. Either calibrate or enter the ratio: - Calibration Mode — draw a line along something with a known dimension (a grid spacing, a door opening, the scale bar) and type that dimension into Actual Length (mm). This is the reliable option, because it measures the sheet as it actually printed. - Or set Scale Ratio directly — 1:5, 1:10, 1:20, 1:50, 1:100 (the default), 1:200, 1:500, or Custom for anything else (e.g. 1:150). 3. Check the Page Size and choose Apply. For a PDF, CortexPM reads the sheet size from the file itself when it converts the drawing — the panel shows Sheet size read from the PDF: 841 × 594 mm — so an A1 sheet measures as A1 without you touching anything. You only need to pick A1, A3 or A4 yourself for image uploads (JPG/PNG), or to deliberately override what was read.

Watch out: the sheet size matters as much as the ratio. A 1:100 plan issued at A1 and plotted to an A3 PDF is really 1:200, and the file still reads as A3. If the ratio and the sheet size don’t match what you’re looking at, every quantity off that sheet is out by a fixed factor — which is exactly the kind of error that survives all the way to a signed contract sum. When in doubt, calibrate.

Watch out: if you change a drawing’s scale after measuring, CortexPM recalculates all the measurements on it so your quantities stay correct — but always confirm the scale is right before you do a lot of measuring.

Step 4 — Create takeoff items

A takeoff item is the thing you’re counting up — for example “External wall — brickwork” or “Slab — concrete”. Create an item with:

• Cost code — what this quantity will be costed against (required). The item’s description defaults from the cost code if you leave it blank.
• Measurement type — what you’ll actually draw: Lineal, Area or Count.
• Quantity types — a single measurement can produce up to three results at once. For example, a lineal measurement of a wall can give you length and, with a height, an area. Available types include Length, Area, Volume, Count, Perimeter, Surface area, Both sides, Top and bottom, and the roof types below.
• Dimensions — width, height and depth (in millimetres) used to derive area and volume from what you draw (e.g. a wall’s height to turn a length into an area, or a slab’s depth to turn an area into a volume).
• Units per marker and colour — for count items, what one marker stands for (a pack of four fixings = 4, so the Count quantity reads in fixings, not packs), and the colour that distinguishes the item’s markups on the drawing. A count item produces a Count and nothing else: if each counted thing has an area or a volume, that belongs in the estimate line’s rate, and round things on the drawing are measured with the area tools.
• Marker, marker size and marker prefix — for count items, how each marker is drawn: a circle (the original dot), square, diamond, triangle, cross, or a numbered circle with the marker’s number inside; a size in sheet points, so it prints the same on an A1 as on an A3 (Normal is the original dot); and the letters in front of each marker’s number. The prefix is suggested from the description — “Floor Waste” gives FW, so its markers read FW1, FW2, FW3 — and you can change it, or blank it for plain numbers. These three only change how the markers look; saving them never recalculates a quantity.

You also set the export quantity — which of the item’s quantities is the one sent to the estimate — and, beside it, a waste percentage.

Reusing items — the library

Most jobs want the same items as the last one. Rather than typing them again:

• Save to library sits in the footer of any item’s edit dialog. It saves the item’s definition — cost code, description, type, quantity slots, pitch, waste, colour and marker — for the whole company. Not its quantities. Saving the same item again updates the entry rather than adding a second one.
• The book icon beside the + in the Takeoff items heading opens the library. Tick the definitions you want and Add. The second tab, From another estimate, lists every estimate in your company that has takeoff items; pick one, tick its items, and they’re copied across the same way, measurements and all other history left behind.

New items from either source start empty, ready to measure. Anything this takeoff already has (same cost code and description) is skipped and the dialog says so, so you can add “everything from the last job” without creating doubles. If a copied item’s cost code belongs to a different company, CortexPM uses the same code in this company, and skips the item with a note when there isn’t one.

Separable portions

When the estimate uses separable portions (Ground Floor, Wing A, Stage 2), each takeoff item can belong to one: pick it in the Separable portion field of the item form. The items heading then offers Group by portion, which regroups the table under the portions with each portion’s export totals by unit as its subtotal, and hiding a portion with its eye toggle hides its measurements on the drawing, so you can look at one portion at a time. When you export, the estimate line receives the item’s portion, and from there it flows into the contract’s separable portions as usual. A portion belongs to its estimate, so an item copied from another estimate or from the library arrives without one.

Roof quantities — pitch

Roofs are drawn on plan but bought on the slope. Pick a pitched quantity type and the item gets a roof pitch field (presets from 15° to 45°, or type your own), and the factor is shown beside it so you can sanity-check it:

• Pitched Area — for an area item: the plan area × 1 / cos(pitch). At 25° that’s × 1.103, so 10 m² on plan is 11.03 m² of roofing.
• Pitched Length — for a lineal item: a rafter or a roof run measured on plan, × 1 / cos(pitch).
• Hip/Valley Length — for a lineal item: a hip or valley measured on plan. These run diagonally, so they rise more slowly than a rafter; the factor assumes the same pitch on both sides of the hip (at 30° it’s × 1.080, against × 1.155 for a rafter).

A typical roofing item is Qty 1 = Area (plan), Qty 2 = Pitched Area, exported from Qty 2.

The sidebar shows the Qty 2 and Qty 3 columns only while some item in the estimate uses that slot, so a takeoff of single-quantity items keeps its width for the descriptions. The column appears as soon as you give an item a second or third quantity. Leave the pitch blank and the pitched quantities simply equal the plan figures.

Waste

Waste (%) is added to the exported quantity only. What you measured stays as it is in the takeoff, so the numbers on screen are still what’s on the drawing; the sidebar flags the export slot with a small +X% tag, the export dialog shows measured and export quantities side by side, and the estimate line receives the gross figure. Change the waste on an item and the estimate’s Sync Takeoff button lights up.

Step 5 — Measure on the drawings

With an item selected, draw on the drawing to record measurements:

• Lineal — trace a run (walls, footings, services).
• Area — outline a region (slabs, roofing, paint areas).
• Count — drop markers on items (downlights, piers, fixtures).

Each measurement adds to its takeoff item’s total, and the totals roll up live as you go.

The toolbar is all icons. Hover any button for its name, its keyboard shortcut and a one-line reminder of what it does; a button shown in purple is switched on.

Tip: turn on Continuous drawing (press C, or the polyline icon) for long runs — each click adds another point along a lineal path or around an area, and you finish the shape with a double-click, Space, or a right-click. Without it you’re starting a fresh measurement every time, so C is the key you’ll reach for most: on for a wall run, off for a quick two-click rectangle, and back on again. The crosshair button draws full-width and full-height guide lines through the cursor once you have a takeoff item selected, which helps when you’re lining up on a grid across a wide sheet.

Tip: the pointer snaps to the drawing itself. On a PDF issued from CAD, which is nearly every drawing you receive, the lines are still lines, and CortexPM reads them when the page converts. As you draw, the pointer sticks to the ends of walls and grid lines, to the points where lines cross, to the midpoint of a line, and to the line itself, so a wall starts and finishes exactly where the architect drew it. A small magenta marker shows what you’re about to snap to: a square for a line end, a cross where two lines meet, a triangle for a midpoint, a circle for a point on a line. It works while you calibrate the scale too, so both clicks land on the ends of the dimension line. Snap is on by default; press S (or the magnet button on the toolbar) to turn it off when you want to click near a line without landing on it. Scanned drawings and images have no lines to read, so nothing snaps on those pages and the magnet shows greyed out; pages converted before this feature existed are the same until you re-upload or swap the drawing. To snap to what you’ve already measured as well (the corners, midpoints and edges of your own measurements, and the centre of a round one), press Shift+S or the polygon button beside the magnet; that’s off by default. Either way a shape always closes on its own first corner. Counts don’t snap. Corners you drag on a finished shape snap the same way.

Tip: Angle lock (press A, or the right-angle button) keeps every segment horizontal or vertical: the line follows the cursor along the nearest axis, and with snap on it also stops level with any line end or corner across the sheet (a dashed guide points at the one it’s lining up with), which is how you trace a room to a grid without a ruler. Hold Shift for 45-degree steps, with or without the lock. Both switches work in the middle of a shape — for one diagonal wall in a locked run, press A, draw the segment, press A again — and both are remembered on your browser. On a rectangle, Shift still gives you a square.

Tip: for round things — tanks, columns, pads, penetrations — use the circle and ellipse buttons on the toolbar, or press O to cycle off / circle / ellipse. With circle on, click the centre of the thing and then a point on its edge; with ellipse on, click two opposite corners of the box it sits in. The area is the true area of the curve, not a polygon’s, and the label shows the diameter (or the two axes) while you draw. Round shapes work in deduct mode too, so a round penetration is a hole in a slab like any other. A selected circle has one handle on its right edge (drag it to resize and it stays round); an ellipse has one on the right and one at the bottom. The setting stays on until you turn it off and is ignored for lineal and count items.

Tip: Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y (or the undo and redo arrows on the toolbar) step back and forward through your measurements. Drawing, moving a shape or a corner, deleting, pasting and marking a deduction are all undoable, and every step is saved as it happens, so what you see after an undo is what’s stored: refresh the page and it’s still that way. The history is per drawing and clears when you change page or set the scale.

Tip: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V copy, cut and paste the selected measurement. The pasted copy lands slightly down and to the right of the original so you can see it, and pasting again cascades from there.

Tip: measurement labels show on the measurement you’ve selected or are hovering over, so a busy sheet stays readable. Press L (or the tag button on the toolbar) to cycle Labels between selected only, all and off; the setting is remembered on your browser. The selected measurement also shows the length of every edge, including the closing edge of an area, and you see the same edge lengths live while you draw.

Marker numbers

Every count marker carries a running number — DL1, DL2, DL3… for an item whose prefix is DL — so a count takeoff can be checked against a fixture schedule marker by marker. The numbers run per item across the whole project, in the order the markers were dropped, so page 1 might carry DL1–DL12 and page 2 DL13–DL20. They are never stored: delete DL3 and the old DL4 becomes DL3 — on the page you’re on straight away, and on other pages the next time you open them — so the sequence never has a gap. On the canvas the number shows under the same label rules as any other measurement (selected, hovered or all), or inside the marker if the item uses the numbered-circle symbol. In the exports it is printed beside every marker whatever the label option, and each sheet’s quantity table lists the numbers on that sheet in a Markers column (“DL1–DL3, DL7”). The sidebar shows an item’s prefix as a small tag beside its description.

Selecting several at once

Click a shape to select it. To work on several together:

• Shift+click (or Ctrl+click) adds a shape to the selection, or drops it out again.
• Drag a box on an empty part of the sheet. Hold Shift while you start it when a takeoff item is selected, so the drag doesn’t begin a measurement; with no item selected a plain drag draws the box. Dragging left to right (blue box) takes only shapes wholly inside it; dragging right to left (green dashed box) takes anything it touches, which is the quick way to grab a long wall run or a slab bigger than the screen.
• Ctrl+A selects everything on the page whose item is showing. Esc clears the selection.

A tag at the bottom of the canvas shows how many are selected. Then:

• Drag any one of them and they all move together, openings with their slabs, as one undo step. Dragging snaps the grabbed shape’s nearest corner to the drawing like any other click.
• Delete removes the lot as one undo step; Ctrl+Z brings them all back.
• Right-click a selected shape for Move to another item…, which lists the items of the same type (lineal to lineal, area to area, count to count). The shapes keep their position and figure, take the new item’s colour and count toward it; an area carries its openings. This is the fix for twenty walls drawn under the wrong item. It is one undo step.

Fixing a shape after the fact

You don’t have to redraw a shape because you missed a jog in a wall or clipped a corner. Select the measurement and use its handles:

• Drag a corner (the solid white handles) to move it. It snaps to the drawing’s lines and, with snap to measurements on, to the corners, midpoints and edges of the other measurements on the page (never to its own shape, whose edges are moving with it).
• Add a corner: a smaller, dotted handle sits halfway along every edge. Drag one and it becomes a real corner right where you drop it, and the edge bends to follow.
• Remove a corner: right-click a solid handle and choose Remove point. A run keeps at least two points and an area at least three, so the menu item greys out at the minimum.

Every change recalculates the quantity on the spot and is one Ctrl+Z step. Rectangles drawn with the rectangle tool stay rectangles (drag a corner to resize them). If an area has a deduction cut out of it, you can’t pull the area’s outline across the hole — move or shrink the hole first.

Curved walls and radius slabs

Curves are drawn as arcs through three points, the way a CAD package does it:

1. Start the run or the area as usual and place the corner the curve starts from.
2. Press R (or the arc button in the toolbar’s drawing group). The toast says what it wants next.
3. Click a point on the curve, then click where the curve ends. The preview shows the arc as you move, with the through-point marked in amber.
4. Carry on with straight segments, or press R again for the next curve. Press R a second time before clicking to cancel an arc you’ve started.

In standard (two-click) mode a single curved wall is start, R, through, end. A two-click rectangle has no curves; switch to continuous drawing (C) for a slab with a radius edge.

The arc is measured as it looks: its length, or the area under it, feeds the total exactly, and it exports, snaps and shows in 3D like any other shape.

Editing a curve. Select the shape. Every real corner has a round handle; the middle of each edge has a smaller one. On a straight edge that handle is a dashed ghost: drag it to add a corner. On an arc it is a solid amber dot at the arc’s apex: drag it to bow the arc more or less, or drag it onto the straight line between the corners to straighten it. Right-click any edge handle for Curve this edge, Straighten edge or Add corner at the apex, which splits an arc into two.

Deductions — openings and voids

Openings and voids come off the item’s total rather than being measured as their own item. Press D (or the Deduct mode button on the toolbar, the minus-in-a-circle) to switch deduct mode on, then draw the window, door or void the same way you’d draw the item itself:

• an area drawn inside one of the item’s areas cuts a hole in it. The hole shows as a void (the drawing shows through) with a dashed outline, its area comes off the item, and every quantity derived from the area (volume, both sides, and so on) follows. Hover the parent area and its label shows the gross figure with the holes taken off.
• a lineal drawn along a skirting or cornice run subtracts its length. It stays visible as a dashed, hatched segment with a minus sign on its label.

A hole belongs to the area you drew it in: it moves when you move that area, it stays inside it when you drag or reshape the hole (it stops at the edge rather than squashing), and it’s deleted with it. You can’t draw or paste an area deduction outside an area of the same item, so an opening that straddles two wall areas needs to be split in two.

Deduct mode switches itself off when you pick a different item, so you can’t forget it’s on and deduct from the next item by mistake. To flip a measurement you’ve already drawn, select it and press Shift+D; that’s undoable like any other change.

Watch out:

• Deductions apply to area and lineal items only. A count can’t be deducted.
• A hole’s edge is not taken off the item’s perimeter. Perimeter stays the outer shape, which is what you want for edging, skirting and formwork. If you need the reveal length of the openings, measure them as their own lineal item.
• On a lineal item with a height (a wall measured as a run and turned into an area), a lineal deduction takes off a full-height strip. That’s right for a door and wrong for a window; for windows, measure the wall as an area and cut the holes out of it.

Seeing it in 3D

The 3D View button (top right of the drawing) stands every measurement on this page up as a solid over the drawing, using the item’s dimensions: a lineal run becomes a wall of the item’s width and height (2.2 m high if you haven’t set one), an area becomes a slab of its depth (100 mm if blank), and a count stands up as its marker symbol at the size it has on the sheet. Orbit with the left mouse button, pan with the right, zoom with the wheel. Headings hidden in the sidebar are hidden here too. The view opens framed on what you’ve measured (or on the whole sheet when the page is empty); Fit at the bottom left frames it again after you’ve orbited away. If the page is shown rotated in 2D, it’s rotated the same way here. Hover a solid to see which item it belongs to and its figure.

• Deductions are real. A hole cut out of an area is a hole in the slab, and a lineal deduction along a wall shows as a red wireframe opening in that wall. A deduction that doesn’t sit inside one of the item’s areas is drawn as a red wireframe only, never as a solid.
• Roofs follow their pitch. An item with a pitched quantity type and a pitch tilts its areas up from their eave edge, and lays its rafters, hips and valleys at their true slope from the point you started drawing them (so draw a rafter from the eave up). Until you say otherwise, the eave is the area’s longest edge, and the 3D view shows an amber notice while any roof area is still using that assumption. To set it, go back to 2D, select the area, right-click the dotted handle in the middle of the eave edge and choose Set as eave. The eave is marked on the selected area, green once set and amber while it is still the assumption; the choice is saved with the measurement, survives adding and moving corners, and is undoable like any other change.

Step 6 — Export to the estimate

When your quantities are ready:

1. Select the takeoff items you want to export.
2. Export to estimate. CortexPM creates estimate line items from them, carrying the chosen export quantity, unit and cost code across.

Each exported takeoff item stays linked to its estimate line. Back in Estimating, Check takeoff sync shows any lines whose quantities have drifted from the drawings, and Update takeoff quantities pulls the current measurements through — so a revised drawing updates your pricing without re-keying (see Estimating).

Marking up drawings

Measuring tells you how much. Markup tells the next person what you meant — the clouded revision, the note that says the slab step is confirmed, the arrow at the detail that doesn’t match the engineer’s. Turn it on with Markup tools (the highlighter icon) on the takeoff toolbar, and the draggable Markup toolbox appears. Drag it by its header to park it somewhere out of your way.

Markup sizes

Markup sizes are in points — the same unit as printed text. A 12 pt note is the same physical size on an A3 detail as it is on an A1 floor plan, so you set a size once instead of re-guessing it per sheet.

The tools

An empty text box is discarded and a very short drag is ignored, so stray clicks don’t litter the drawing.

Markups are saved automatically as you work (the toolbox footer shows Saved, Unsaved or Saving…), they are shared — everyone on the project sees the same marks on the same sheet — and they follow a drawing through a swap, just like measurements. Hover a mark to see who added it. Anyone who can edit takeoff can move, restyle or delete any mark, whoever drew it.

Tip: while a creation tool is active, existing markups stop responding to clicks, so you can draw straight over the top of what’s already there without grabbing it by accident. Press Esc to get back to the pointer.

Style controls

The toolbox only shows the controls that apply to the tool you’re using or the item you’ve selected, and its header tells you what you’re about to change: New markup when you’re styling the next thing you draw, or N selected when you’re restyling what’s already there.

• Colour — swatches plus a Custom colour picker; this sets stroke and fill together.
• Line weight — 0.25 pt through 6 pt.
• Line style — Solid, Dashed, Long dash, Dotted or Dash dot.
• Text size — 6 pt through 72 pt, with Bold, Italic and Underline.
• Text plate — a white backing behind the text so a note stays readable over dense linework. Worth having on for anything written across a hatched area.
• Revision cloud bump size — Fine, Small, Medium, Large or Coarse. A cloud round a whole room and a cloud round one dimension both want to look right, and bump size is what does that.
• Fill — the fill opacity of a cloud, rectangle or ellipse, from none to 60 %.
• Opacity — a slider with a live percentage, for sitting a mark over linework you still need to read.

Restyling a selection also updates the defaults, so the next item you draw matches what you just set. Changing a style while the text editor is open keeps the editor open — you can watch the size change as you pick it.

Selecting, moving and tidying up

• Drag on empty canvas to marquee-select: anything the box touches is selected.
• Shift+click adds or removes items; Shift+drag adds a marquee to the current selection; Ctrl+A selects every markup on the page.
• Selecting a single item loads that item’s style into the toolbox, so the controls always show what you’re about to change.
• A selected cloud, rectangle or ellipse gets resize handles, and you can grab any of them anywhere inside its bounds rather than having to hit the thin outline.
• Right-click for Undo, Redo, Copy, Cut, Paste, Delete, Bring to front and Send to back. Right-clicking an unselected item targets that item first.
• Clear page removes every mark on the current page. It asks first, and you can undo it while you stay on the page.

Watch out: right-click is the markup menu while markup is on, so pan with a middle-mouse drag instead.

Watch out: the markup undo history is per page and per sitting — it clears when you change page and it isn’t shared. If a colleague deletes a mark, you can’t undo that from your screen.

Tip: switch markup off to get back to measuring. The marks stay on the sheet (and in every export); they just stop responding to clicks so you can’t grab one by accident.

Exporting a marked-up drawing

Export PDF (the PDF icon at the right of the toolbar) produces a copy of the drawing with your measurements and markup on it — for checking your own work, sending a query to the architect, or keeping a record of exactly what was measured when a variation is argued later.

In the Export Drawing as PDF dialog, choose:

• Current View — exactly what’s on screen now, at the zoom and pan you’re looking at. Use it to pull out one detail.
• Full Page (2D only) — the whole sheet.
• Include measurements summary — adds a schedule of the measured quantities behind the drawing, so the sheet and the numbers travel together.

These two are a snapshot of the screen, so they carry your markup shapes and annotations; selection handles are never included.

Exporting every page

All pages (built in the background) produces one PDF for the whole drawing set — the thing to send with a tender query or file with the estimate. Because a 30-sheet A1 set takes minutes to draw, it is built on the server while you carry on working:

1. Pick Pages with measurements only (the usual choice) or Every page in the set, and whether to show measurement labels on the sheets.
2. Start export. The dialog shows Drawing page N of M; you can close it and come back, the export keeps going.
3. When it finishes, Download the PDF. Exports are kept for seven days.

Each sheet comes out at A3 landscape with the measurements drawn as crisp vector linework over the drawing — areas filled in the item colour with their openings cut out, unattached deductions hatched with a dashed outline, lineals as lines (with their width shown where the item has one), counts as the item’s marker symbol with the marker number beside it (or inside a numbered circle) — and every markup on the sheet (clouds, arrows, notes, callouts, rectangles, ellipses and dimension lines), followed by a table of the quantities measured on that sheet, with a Markers column of the count numbers on that sheet where there are any. A project summary at the end lists every takeoff item with Qty 1–3 and the export quantity including waste. Rotated pages come out the way you have them turned, with notes and labels upright over the same spot they sit on screen.

Where to next

Your measured quantities feed straight into pricing — see Estimating to turn them into a costed estimate, then approve it to create the budget in Jobs & Job Cost.