What you will end up with
By the bottom of this page you will have a project holding one drawing, a symbol counted across the whole sheet, a pipe run measured, one group priced against a database item, and an Excel workbook of the quantities.
Pick a straightforward drawing for the first run. A lighting plan, a small power layout or a domestic services sheet exported from CAD works best, because a drawing that came straight out of CAD is counted exactly and instantly. See Vector and image drawings for the difference.
This page uses the default controls throughout. On the canvas, left-drag pans the drawing, the mouse wheel zooms towards the cursor, and CTRL+CLICK places each point of a polygon or a line.
1. Sign in
- 1
Open ZeroCount and enter the email and password you use for Ensign.Software.
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Click Login. A Gathering session information... overlay appears briefly, then the dashboard opens on Projects.
More detail: Signing in and out.
2. Create the project
A project holds every drawing for one job, and the export covers the whole project.
- 1
On the Projects page, click New Project.
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Enter a Project Name. This is the only required field; Client, Project Type and Project Description are optional.
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Click Create. ZeroCount opens the new project straight away.
More detail: Creating a project.
3. Add a category and upload the PDF
Drawings live inside Categories, which are named buckets such as Lighting, Small Power or Mechanical. A new project has none yet, so make one first.
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Click Add Category in the project header.
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Enter a Category Name and click Add.
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Drag your PDF onto the new category card, or click the dashed Upload or drag file to start tile to choose it.
- 4
Wait for the Uploading pill on the card to clear and the thumbnail to appear.
Only PDFs are accepted. A PDF with more than one page is split into one drawing per sheet automatically, up to 25 sheets.
More detail: Uploading drawings and Organising with categories.
4. Open the drawing
- 1
Click the drawing card to select it. A blue ring shows it is picked.
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Click Submit at the top right of the project page.
The takeoff workspace opens: the drawing on the canvas, the toolbar across the top and the marker sidebar down the right. Take a moment to pan and zoom around it.
More detail: Opening drawings and switching between them and A tour of the takeoff workspace.
5. Set the scale
Do this before you measure anything. Counts do not depend on the scale, but every length and area does, and getting it right afterwards means revisiting the groups you have already made.
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Check the paper size pill in the toolbar, for example A1. Hover it to confirm the sheet size and orientation match the title block.
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Leave the scale system on Metric, or choose Architectural to work in feet and inches.
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Open the scale list beside it and pick the drawing's scale, for example 1 : 100.
- 4
If the drawing has no stated scale, choose Custom and use the Draw & Calibrate tab: enter a known distance, then draw a line along it on the sheet.
More detail: Setting the scale and Calibrating a drawing.
6. Count your first symbol
This is the tool the app is built around. You show it one example and it marks every other instance on the sheet.
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Click New Takeoff and choose Auto Count Symbol, or press ⌥+S.
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Zoom in on one clear instance of the symbol you want to count.
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Drag a box around it, including any letter or code that always sits beside it, and release.
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Read the result. A new group appears at the top of the sidebar with every match counted, and a message reports how many instances were found.
On a vector drawing you will see green dashed rectangles previewing the matches while you drag, with a running count beside the cursor. The tool stays armed if Continuous is ticked; press ESC to put it down.
More detail: Auto Count Symbol.
7. Optional: scan the whole drawing
If the drawing is vector, you can let ZeroCount find the repeated symbols itself rather than capturing them one at a time.
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Choose New Takeoff then Auto Detect Symbols (scan drawing).
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Wait for the grid of symbol thumbnails, each with an estimated count.
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Tick the ones you want and click the Detect button at the foot, which names how many symbols you have ticked. Each one becomes its own group.
More detail: Auto Detect Symbols.
8. Measure a pipe run
Lengths work the same way as counts: sample one line and the whole service is traced, with its bends and T-junctions counted as fittings.
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Choose New Takeoff then Auto Linear (sample one line).
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Zoom in until the line is comfortably thick on screen.
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Drag a short stroke along the middle of one pipe or cable run and release.
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Check the sidebar. A Linear group holds the measured runs, with Bends and T-Junctions count groups beside it.
A miss leaves the sample line painted red and the tool still armed, with a note asking you to zoom in and draw directly on top of the line. Try again closer to the centre of the run.
To draw a length by hand instead, use Linear Measurement and CTRL+CLICK each point along it.
More detail: Auto Takeoff from one sample and Drawing linear measurements.
9. Review what you have
Nothing is final until you say so. The sidebar lists one row per group, newest first, with its colour, name and total.
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Click a group's name and type over it. Enter saves, Esc puts the old name back. Name it as you want it to read in the export.
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Expand the group and click a thumbnail to jump to that marker on the drawing. Click a false match on the canvas and use Delete marker in the small menu beside it.
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If one symbol ended up in two groups, click on the row of the group you want to fold away and pick the group to merge it into.
More detail: Rename, duplicate, delete and the group menu and Merging groups.
10. Link a price
A group becomes priced work when it is linked to an item from the component catalogue, Contractors Choice, an assembly or one of your company's custom items.
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Click Link item on the group row. The Database Items window opens, pre-filtered to the right unit of measure for that group's type.
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Choose the dataset you need and search for the item.
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Double-click the row to link it. The group row now shows the item's code and description.
More detail: The Database Items window and Linking to database items.
11. Export the quantities
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Click Actions in the toolbar.
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Open the Export submenu.
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Choose Export Quantities (.xlsx). The workbook downloads as the project name followed by
- quantities-export.xlsx.
The workbook holds one sheet per drawing in the project plus a Totals sheet across all of them, with each group's type, scale, name, linked code and quantity, split by zone where you have drawn zones.
More detail: Exporting to Excel and Understanding the workbook.
Where to go from here
That is one drawing counted, measured, priced and exported. On a real job the next things worth learning are zones, so counts break down by room or floor, Marker Services, so the sidebar and the export group by service, and the automatic search across the rest of the category, which finds the same symbol on every other drawing while you carry on working.
Next steps
- Ways to count symbols — every counting tool and when to use each.
- Why set the scale first — scale, calibration and paper size in full.
- What zones do — breaking counts down by room or area.
- Marker Services — grouping the sidebar and the export by service.
- Preparing a project for export — the checks worth making before you send quantities out.