Materials Takeoff

Measuring quantities off the sheet against a list of items, and what those quantities are made of.

Materials Takeoff answers "how much". You build a list of items - the things being counted, priced or ordered - and then draw on the sheet to measure them. Every drawing you make is attached to an item, and the item's quantity is the sum of its drawings.

Most of this section is how to draw: placing points, snapping them onto the drawing's own linework, and reshaping what you have already traced. Start at Drawing a measurement, and keep the keyboard reference to hand.

Three things decide the number an item reports:

1. What was drawn. Area, length or count, measured off the page's scale.
2. The unit. SF, CY, TN, EA and the rest. Some convert straight from the geometry; others need a dimension you supply, like a depth or a density.
3. The multiplier. Waste, coats, lifts - a plain number applied on top.

Open the list from View > Panels > Materials. Materials is part of the paid feature set, so the panel appears only where your subscription includes it; the trial includes it in full.

Every quantity comes off the page's scale, so nothing measures correctly until the scale is right, and nothing warns you when it is wrong. See Scale.