Tidying Takeoff Results

What needs tidying, and what does not

A takeoff leaves two very different kinds of thing on the drawing, and it is worth telling them apart before you start deleting.

• Markers — the linear runs and the Bends, T-Junctions and Reducers fittings. These are your measurements. They are counted, priced and exported.
• Overlay markings — sampling lines, the small rings that mark a rise or a drop, and duct reducer symbols. These are painted over the drawing to show what the detection saw. They are not markers: they are never counted, priced or exported, and they cannot be selected.

Most "clutter" after an Auto Detect batch is the second kind, and clearing it does not touch a single measurement.

Clearing the detection overlay

The takeoff panel sits at the top of the sidebar, above the group list. Once a sample exists it shows a Clear detection overlay link.

Click it to remove every sampling line, rise and drop ring and duct reducer marking from the drawing. Its tooltip says exactly what it does: "Removes the detection markings drawn over the drawing. Your measurements are not affected."

Clearing a failed sample line

When a sample misses, the tool stays armed and your drag is redrawn as a red dashed guide, with the panel showing No stroked vectors found under the sample line — zoom in and draw directly on top of a linear.

That red line clears when you:

• drag again and hit something;
• press ESC;
• right-click on the drawing;
• switch to another tool, or click the Current Tool button in the header to put the sample tool away;
• click Clear detection overlay.

A notice about patterns that found no runs, such as 1 of 2 selected patterns found no runs., is dismissed with the beside it.

Deleting junk runs

Detection sometimes traces something that is not a service — a section of border, a hatch line, a leader. Remove those the same way you would remove any marker.

1. 1

   Click the run on the drawing to select it. Hold Shift or Ctrl and click to add more runs to the selection.

2. 2

   Press DELETE. Every selected marker is removed, whether it is a run, a fitting, an area or a count.

You can also work from the sidebar: expand the group, hover the row for the run and click Delete marker, or right-click the row and choose Delete.

To remove a whole detection, delete its groups instead of its markers. Open the group's menu and choose Delete Linear Measurement or Delete Symbol Group; each asks you to confirm first.

Removing a whole sample

A single sample usually leaves several groups behind — one per pipe size, plus its fittings. To undo a sample completely, delete all of them:

• every size group it created, such as Ø22mm, Ø28mm and Unsized;
• Sample 1 · Bends;
• Sample 1 · T-Junctions;
• Sample 1 · Reducers, if you have split any of its runs.

Then clear the detection overlay so the sampling line goes with them.

Fixing runs rather than deleting them

Not every wrong run needs to go. In mask view you can reshape what was detected:

• A run that should be two — drag the Split chip onto it to cut it and place a Reducer at the cut.
• Two runs that should be one — drag one so it meets the other in the same service and they join automatically, with any overlap counted once.
• A branch that should tee into a main — drag its end onto the middle of the main and a T-junction is added, tagged with all three sizes.

See Splitting and joining runs for the full procedure.

Duplicate groups from two samples of the same service are best merged rather than deleted, so both sets of markers survive in one group. See Merging groups.

Why sample numbering matters

Fittings are pooled by sample name. Sample 2 · Bends collects the elbows from the second sample, and nothing else.

This is why Clear detection overlay deliberately keeps the numbering where it is. If it reset the counter, your next sample would be called Sample 1 again, and its bends and tees would be poured into the first sample's fitting groups — a quiet costing error with nothing on screen to show for it. Clearing the paint leaves the numbering alone precisely so that cannot happen.

Reset Drawing does reset the numbering, and correctly so: it removes the markers as well, so there is nothing left for a reused name to collide with. See Resetting a drawing.

Common issues

The overlay markings came back

They are redrawn by the next sample you take. Clear the overlay again once you have finished sampling.

I deleted a run I needed

Retrace it with Linear Measurement under New Takeoff, or sample the service again and delete the duplicate groups. See Drawing linear measurements.

The drawing still looks cluttered after clearing

What is left are markers. Fade everything except one service with mask view to read it in isolation, or use the group Visibility submenu to hide a group you are not working on. See Group visibility.

Next steps

• Splitting and joining runs — reshape a detected run instead of deleting it.
• Merging groups — combine duplicate groups from two samples.
• Sizes, bends, T-junctions and reducers — what each group a sample creates is for.
• Resetting a drawing — start the drawing again from scratch.