How it works
From a builder's PDF to a quote you'd put your name on
Five stages. You review every one, and nothing reaches a builder without a person deciding it should.
Upload
The plan set, as the builder sent it
Architectural and structural sets upload together. Full-size 24×36 and 30×42 sheets are read natively — most estimating tools choke on them and ask you to export something smaller.
On a large set, sheets are triaged first: electrical, plumbing, mechanical, civil and interior-finish sheets carry no framing quantities, so they're left out. You see exactly which sheets were read and which were skipped, and why.
Anything ambiguous is always read. Dropping a framing sheet corrupts a bid; keeping an electrical one costs nothing.
Review
The questions a senior estimator asks first
Before producing a single quantity, the engine reviews every sheet and comes back with what it needs settled: which set governs where the architectural and structural drawings conflict, what's in scope, which products the plans leave open, what's unreadable or missing.
Each question arrives with a recommended answer and a few plausible alternatives, so answering is usually one click. Your answers are treated as owner direction and cited in the takeoff where they resolve a conflict.
It also reads the hard facts off the plans here — the jobsite address, which sets the sales-tax jurisdiction, and the finished square footage, with its derivation stated so the billing basis is auditable.
Takeoff
Priced against your catalog, organised by this design
Every orderable line is assigned to a pack — a builder ordering group like FOUNDATION & SILL or ROOF FRAME — derived from the structure of this house rather than a fixed template.
Lines match against your uploaded price list: your SKUs, your units, your margins. Where a design calls for something your catalog doesn't carry, the line is flagged and priced as an explicit estimate rather than quietly guessed.
Each quantity carries its arithmetic. Not "117 studs" but "124 LF exterior wall / 16in oc = 93 studs + 4 corners + 6 openings = 117".
Check
An independent pass that argues with the first
A separate audit re-derives the takeoff from the plans without trusting it: recounting studs from wall lengths, joists from spans, headers opening by opening against the window and door schedules, and hunting for anything the drawings require that the takeoff lacks.
Identity and price guards run underneath. A line can't bind to a product of the wrong class — fire-rated shaftliner to a concrete forming tube, sheet goods to a furring strip, lumber to hardware — and any unit price absurd for its material class gets flagged against your own catalog.
Error-level findings block the quote from being sent until a human accepts or dismisses each one.
Send
Something the builder can act on
A designed proposal PDF, plus a mobile quote page where the builder reviews, downloads and accepts. You see when it's opened and how many distinct people visited — counted honestly, with your own team's opens excluded.
Sending locks the quote so the customer's copy can't drift. Changes after that become an explicit Rev 2, and every version is kept.
See it run on your own plans
Bring a job you've already bid by hand. That's the only comparison worth making.