A drawing goes in. An order in your own item codes, a cutting plan and a quote the client can read come out.
Quoting from a drawing is skilled, slow work. An estimator reads a PDF set, decides what is theirs, measures, applies product rules from memory, adds wastage by rule of thumb and types the result into a quote. The cutting is left to site. Errors surface when the material arrives.
Takeoff is Inspirotech’s own product for building-material suppliers and fabricators. The AI reads the drawing and does the arithmetic; the estimator makes the calls that need judgement.
Seven steps, from the PDF to the client’s inbox, on one job record.
A drawing set arrives as a PDF: six sheets, several trades, a title block on every page. Before a single board is counted, someone has to work out which parts are yours, what scale each sheet is at and which revision is current.
Takeoff reads the set first. It takes the scale from the scale bar and title block, separates the products you supply from the work of other trades, and pulls out the details that change a quantity — revision, elevation names, wind zone, colour, notes.
Anything it cannot confirm — a sheet with no scale bar, a note that contradicts the schedule — is flagged on the sheet it came from, not guessed.
The estimator works on the drawing the way they do today: outline the area to be clad, mark the openings, set the board direction, count the corners.
Each markup is a condition the AI can calculate from — an area with a product and centres, an opening to deduct, a run of trim. Conditions are checked against what the AI read from the drawing, so a missed opening or a mismatched product is raised before the numbers are.
The markup stays with the job. When revision D arrives, the conditions carry over and only what changed needs marking again.
| # | Condition | Value |
|---|---|---|
| A | Cladding area · CL-150 horizontal · 300 ctrs | 57.5 m² |
| O1–3 | Openings deducted · 2 windows, 1 door | 13.3 m² |
| C | External corners | 2 × 3.7 m |
| D | Board direction | Horizontal |
Behind the markup sits a calculation engine loaded with your product rules: stock lengths, clip centres, corner and jointer logic, how you round.
Once the conditions are set, the AI runs the engine and produces the order line by line, in your own item codes, with every line traceable to the markup it came from.
Where a rule is ambiguous — which stock length, which jointer — it asks the estimator instead of choosing, and holds that line until it has an answer.
| Code | Item | Qty | Unit | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CL-150 | Cladding board | 1,070 | lm | A–D |
| CL-C1 | Fixing clip | 3,570 | ea | A–D |
| CL-EC | External corner | 4 | ea | C |
| CL-WT | Window trim | 9 | set | O1–O9 |
| CL-ST | Starter strip | 44 | lm | Base |
| CL-J | Jointer | ? 178 | ea | Confirm |
Most suppliers add a flat percentage for wastage — ten per cent on boards, fifteen on trims — because nobody has the data to do better. On a large job that is a lot of material, paid for and sent back, or short on site.
Takeoff sets wastage per product and per type of install from the jobs you have already finished. Every site return, offcut and shortfall is fed back, and the figure keeps adjusting.
The percentage it uses is shown on every order, with the number of jobs behind it, so the estimator can see why it is what it is.
How the boards are cut is usually left to whoever is on site, and the offcut pile shows it.
Takeoff plans the cuts: which stock bar each piece comes from, how every bar is split, which offcuts are long enough to keep. Each cut is labelled with the wall and course it belongs to, so nobody on site has to work it out.
The plan exports as a PDF for site and a CSV for the workshop, ready to use as it is.
In most businesses the takeoff ends in one spreadsheet and the quote starts in another, with someone copying lines across.
Here they are one job. When the calculation is done, the results are laid out as clean data and filled into your quote template — price list, margins, GST, terms. The estimator checks it, then exports and sends it in one step.
Change a condition on the drawing and the quote changes with it. There is no second copy to keep in step.
| Item | Qty | Rate | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| CL-150 cladding board | 1,070 lm | 38.50 | 41,195.00 |
| CL-C1 fixing clip | 3,570 | 0.95 | 3,391.50 |
| CL-WT window trim | 9 set | 118.00 | 1,062.00 |
| Corners, starter, jointers | 3 lines | — | 1,566.80 |
A normal quote is a list of codes and totals. The client has to take it on trust, or pick up the phone.
A Takeoff quote carries the marked-up drawing. The client sees each area of the building, what goes into it and what it costs: the north wall, these boards, these corners, this price.
Questions come back pointed at a specific area, and the answer is already on the drawing.
Drawings come in as they arrive today. Orders, cut plans and quotes go out in the formats your team and your systems already use.
Building-product suppliers and fabricators who quote from drawings.
A one-off setup fee, then per drawing or monthly. Both are fixed in writing before anything starts — see Offerings.
How an engagement runs is on How we work; who owns the data is on Data ownership.
Four steps, two minutes. Within two working days: can AI take them on, what it needs, roughly what it costs.