What a Unit marker is
A Unit marker is a single point on the drawing, placed manually with one click. Use it for counting things that don't repeat as a clean recognisable symbol — fittings that vary subtly, hand-annotated items, anything where auto-detection is more trouble than it's worth.
Unit markers live in the Count Symbol section of the sidebar.
The simplest mental model: one click, one unit. Twenty clicks, twenty units.
When to use Unit markers vs Detection
| Situation | Use which? |
|---|---|
| Drawing has a clean legend with repeating symbols | Detection — let auto-detection find them |
| Same symbol but the drawings are hand-marked-up scans, varying shapes | Unit — Detection will struggle, click them in |
| Drawing has 5 of one fitting and you don't fancy dragging an Auto Count Symbol selection box | Unit — clicking 5 times is faster than the whole detection rig |
| You need a specific symbol that isn't in the legend | Detection via Auto Count Symbol on the on-drawing instance |
| Mixed bag — some clean symbols, some weird ones | Both, in their own groups |
A typical lighting takeoff might use Detection for the standard fittings (60% of the count) and Unit groups for the unusual ones (40%).
Creating a Unit group and placing markers
- 1
Click Count Symbol in the toolbar (under Takeoff), or use Linked Takeoff if you want to bind to a database item from the start.
- 2
A new Count Symbol group appears in the sidebar, with the cursor entering placement mode. The cursor reflects the chosen symbol.
- 3
Click on the drawing to drop the first marker. Continue clicking — each click is another count.
- 4
Press ESC to leave placement mode.
The group's count badge in the sidebar updates with each click.
Width — the only per-marker dimension
Unit markers have one configurable property beyond colour and opacity: width. It controls how large each click is rendered on the canvas. Useful when you've placed Unit markers on a dense drawing and they're overlapping other markup — shrink the width and they tuck out of the way.
Set the width from the group's appearance dropdown — see Group appearance.
In the Excel export
Unit groups appear in the Type = Unit rows. Each group's row shows:
- The group's label as the Takeoff Description.
- The linked product Code and Description (if linked).
- A count per zone, plus Uncategorized and Total Quant.
Each individual marker also gets a child row in the export — labelled Unit 1, Unit 2, etc. — so you can see which zone each one falls in. This is unique to Unit and Linear/Area types; Detection groups don't get the per-marker child rows.