Take off quantities from a PDF plan

Put the PDF sheets the client issued into the project files, each carrying the sheet number and revision it was issued under. Takeoff picks the file up from here, so you measure the drawing on record rather than a copy out of an inbox.

Why: An Aufmass can only be checked if the reader can find the sheet it came from. Filing the issued revision first means every quantity you produce later names a drawing that still exists in the same form.

Open the sheet on the Measurements tab and calibrate before you draw anything. Click the two ends of a dimension the plan already states, type its real length, and every later measurement converts to metres. On a clean vector sheet you can take the stated scale, 1:50 or 1:100, as a preset instead.

Why: A plan that has been through a plotter or a scanner is rarely at the scale printed on it. Calibrating against a stated dimension costs a minute, while a scale two percent out multiplies quietly through every area on the sheet and only surfaces at Abrechnung.

Work the sheet trade by trade. Area for floors, screed and wall faces, distance or polyline for skirting, kerb and pipe runs, count for doors, sockets and fittings. Give an area a depth where you need the volume, and take openings off the way the rules for that trade require.

Why: The rate you are pricing is a rate per the quantity the contract measures, and VOB/C sets those rules trade by trade. Measuring the way the trade is settled keeps the figure in your offer and the figure in the final account the same figure.

In the measurement ledger give each entry a description a stranger would recognise, the storey or room it sits in, and a group per trade. The ledger keeps every entry beside its shape on the sheet, so clicking the line takes you back to the drawing.

Why: A checkable Aufmass is one where a number leads back to a named measurement on a named sheet. Naming costs seconds now and saves the afternoon when the client asks where a figure came from.

Open the measured quantities register, which rolls up everything captured so far grouped by unit, trade or source with running totals. Filter it down to one drawing or one trade and read the totals against the building you expect. Export the rollup when somebody else has to check it.

Why: A storey measured twice and a storey missed altogether both look plausible on the sheet and obvious in the total. This is the last cheap place to catch either, before a wrong quantity gets a price and leaves the office in your offer.

Confirm the measurements you trust into the bill. Each one becomes a position carrying its quantity and unit, and it stays linked to the measurement on the drawing, so a reissued sheet updates the quantity in place instead of sending you back to the start of the takeoff.

Why: This is where a measured building turns into something you can price. Because each position keeps its link, the chain from the money back to the line on the plan stays intact, which is exactly what a client checking your Aufmass asks to see.

Export the finished bill as a GAEB XML file straight from the BOQ editor. What leaves the office is the same structure you built from the takeoff, positions, quantities and units, in the exchange format every German AVA package opens without retyping.

Why: A bill that travels as GAEB stays a bill instead of becoming a PDF someone retypes with new mistakes. The quantities you measured arrive in the other side's software as data, and the Aufmass chain behind them survives the handover.