Getting Started With eTakeoff - Takeoff Software
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There are three versions of the software: Basic (a free plan viewer and printing tool), Advanced (with full feature Takeoff), and Premiere (our most powerful Takeoff solution with the added power of user-defined construction assemblies). In this short video, I will demonstrate key features of all three versions.
When you first open eTakeoff, your screen will look like this, with the “Getting Started” page displayed in the main window. The “Tip of the Day” window provides fast and easy tips on how to use eTakeoff. It will be displayed each time you open eTakeoff, unless you uncheck “Show Tips at startup” in the lower, left-hand corner of the window.
You will find that creating a project with eTakeoff is very quick, because drawing files can be stored on your local computer, or on a network server, and they don’t need to be first converted to tip format or copied from their original location. eTakeoff can process files in their native formats, and all measurements are stored separately in their own database with instant, automatic backup.
To create a project, first, click the “New Project” button in the “Project” group. Next, select the folder that contains your drawing files. This window will allow you to navigate to your project folder. If this is your first time using eTakeoff, and you don’t have any drawings available, then use the sample project provided for you in the eTakeoff “Samples” folder. Click on the folder, and then click “Ok”. Add any optional project information you’d like – you can add description, location, and bid date, and then click “Ok”. Finally, select the drawings you want in your project. Your project will be created, and you will see the first drawing in the main window. You can access all your projects, from the project list, and all the drawings for the current project are available here in the drawing list.
Let’s take a look at the easy to use Ribbon Bar interface. The Ribbon Bar has multiple tabs across the top of the application. To learn more about any of the buttons, hover your mouse over the button, and a Tool Tip will appear. For more detailed help, you can use the “Context Help” button here.
First, click the button, then click on a tab, a group, or any button, and the eTakeoff help system will appear. The “Home” tab is designed to give you access to the most used tools for projects, navigation, and Takeoff. Here in the project group, you can create a new project, open a current project, or edit the current project’s properties. The navigation group gives you access to zooming tools, plus drawing and page selections.
You can perform a complete Takeoff by using the tools in the “Takeoff” group. You can perform area, count, length, and perimeter takeoff using just these 4 buttons. You can also perform two-point line segment Takeoffs or snap your lines to ninety degrees using “Polar Mode”. Edit a current measurement with the tools in the “Measurement Edit” group and set the scale for drawings and pages here. Explore the other tabs by clicking on them, and then hover your mouse to get tool tip help.
Below the ribbon are two control panels: one on the left, and one on the right. The left control panel contains the trace list, drawing rotation, and the drawing list. The right control panel contains the quantity list and the measurement summary. We will see how all these controls work in just a minute.
To navigate drawings, you can roll your scroll wheel to zoom in, and backward to zoom out. Click and hold down on both mouse buttons to pan the drawing. Now let’s take some measurements and really sets eTakeoff apart.
You must first set the scale to the drawing you wish to measure. Click the scale button in the scale group. You can choose the scale from the standard scale list, you can type the scale in yourself, or you can calibrate the scale from two points on the drawing. Next, select the type of measurement trace to use from the four buttons in the Takeoff group. Choose area, length, count or perimeter. Now just point and click your mouse to take a measurement. You can see results in the Quantity List in the right control panel. Finish the measurement by pushing the “Enter” key or the letter “S” key on your keyboard. If you’d like to add additional information for the measurement (such as a location), just push the letter “D” key on the keyboard and fill in the location description data.