Where every count starts
New Takeoff is the blue button at the right of the toolbar, and it holds every tool that puts a marker on the drawing. Everything else in the workspace either organises what these tools produce or exports it.
The menu is in five sections: Options, which change how the tools behave, Takeoff for the four tools you drive yourself, Auto Takeoff for the ones that find things for you, Linked Takeoff for starting a group already priced, and Import for bringing groups in from another drawing.
Picking a tool arms it. The New Takeoff button is then replaced by a cancel button reading, for example, Current Tool: detection. Click it or press ESC to put the tool down.
Options
These two rows sit at the top of the menu. Both are remembered in your browser and apply to every drawing, and neither closes the menu when you change it.
Draw shape
A segmented control with Box and Polygon , deciding how you outline a symbol for Auto Count Symbol. The information icon beside it explains:
"How you outline a symbol for Auto Count. Box drags a rectangle around it; Polygon clicks point-to-point, for symbols a rectangle would over-cover."
Box is right for nearly everything. Reach for Polygon when a rectangle round your symbol would swallow a neighbouring symbol or a line running past it.
Continuous
A checkbox that keeps the tool armed after each marker. Its information icon reads:
"Keeps the takeoff tool armed after each marker, so you can place several without reopening this menu. Press Esc to stop. Applies to linear, area, count and Auto Count."
Leave it on when you are placing a run of manual counts, and press ESC when you are done.
Takeoff
The four tools you drive by hand. Each creates a new group and arms itself for drawing.
| Item | Icon | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Count Symbol | ⌥+C | Creates a Count group, then places a dot on each click. The manual fallback when a symbol will not match automatically. See Counting manually. | |
| Auto Count Symbol | ⌥+S | Creates a Detection group. Outline one symbol and every other instance on the drawing is marked. See Auto Count Symbol. | |
| Linear Measurement | ⌥+L | Creates a Linear group and starts a multipoint line. Place each point with CTRL+CLICK and right-click to finish. See Drawing linear measurements. | |
| Area Measurement | ⌥+A | Creates an Area group and starts a polygon, placed and finished the same way. See Drawing area measurements. |
The shortcut is bound to ⌥+S rather than the space bar because Windows reserves that combination. The shortcuts do nothing while a tool is already armed, so press ESC before switching tools with the keyboard.
Auto Takeoff
The tools that search the drawing for you. All three depend on ZeroCount being able to read the drawing's geometry, so when they are unavailable the section header carries a second line explaining why.
| Item | Icon | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Auto Linear (sample one line) | Drag a short stroke along one pipe or cable run. The whole service is traced into Linear groups by pipe size, with Bends and T-Junctions count groups for the fittings. See Auto Takeoff from one sample. | |
| Auto Detect (pick line patterns) | Reads the drawing and lists the line patterns it found, each as a colour swatch marked Solid or Dashed. Tick the services you want and each is traced as though you had sampled it. See Auto Detect Linear. | |
| Auto Detect Symbols (scan drawing) | Scans the sheet for repeated symbols and offers them as a grid of thumbnails with estimated counts. Tick the ones you want and each becomes its own group. See Auto Detect Symbols. |
When the section is greyed out
All three items disable together, and the header explains which of four reasons applies:
| Note | What to do |
|---|---|
| "No active file" | No drawing is open. |
| "Still checking this drawing" | The drawing is being classified. Wait a moment and reopen the menu. |
| "Rotate the file back to its uploaded orientation first" | The drawing has been rotated in the app since it was opened. Rotate it back with Actions and the tools return. |
| "Missing paper-size info for this file (legacy upload)" | The drawing was uploaded before paper size was recorded. Re-upload the PDF. |
On an image drawing
When the drawing is a scan or a flattened export, the header instead reads "Image drawing — first detection takes a few seconds". The tools still work; the drawing simply has to be prepared on the server first, and only the first run pays that cost. See Vector and image drawings.
Linked Takeoff
The same four tools, each starting with the price attached rather than added afterwards. Choosing one opens the Database Items window first; pick the component, Contractors Choice item, assembly or custom item, and the tool arms with that item already linked to the new group.
| Item | Icon | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| Count Symbol | ⇧+⌥+C | |
| Auto Count | ⇧+⌥+S | |
| Linear Measurement | ⇧+⌥+L | |
| Area Measurement | ⇧+⌥+A |
The item list is pre-filtered to the unit of measure that suits the group type, so a Linear takeoff opens on linear items and a count opens on unit items. See Linked takeoff.
Continuous does not re-arm a linked Auto Count. A linked group is deliberately made once, so that a second capture cannot quietly inherit the first one's price.
Import
Import from Files opens a picker listing the marker groups on the other drawings in this project, so you can bring a Detection, Linear, Area or Count group across to the drawing you have open. It also carries Areas of Interest and zones.
The item is disabled unless more than one drawing is selected for the project, so pick the drawings you want to import from on the project page before opening the workspace.
See Import from Files.
Putting a tool down
Any of these stops the current tool:
- Press ESC.
- Click the Current Tool button in the toolbar.
- Right-click on the canvas, which cancels a box-type tool. With a Linear, Area or Zone polygon, right-click finishes the shape instead.
If you are part-way through a polygon when you press ESC, a shape with fewer than two points is discarded along with its empty group; a shape with two or more points is finished where it stands.
Next steps
- Ways to count symbols — choosing between the counting tools.
- Auto Takeoff from one sample — sampling a service line in detail.
- The Actions menu — everything that is not a takeoff tool.
- Keyboard shortcuts — the full list in one table.