Once a plan sheet has a confirmed scale, you can measure on it. Open the plan from the Takeoff tab, pick a tool from the toolbar above the sheet, and draw. Lengths snap to the nearest sixteenth of an inch by default, and the length shows on the line while you place it. Change the snap (down to a 32nd, up to a whole foot) in Settings, the gear in the header. Every shape lands in the Measurements drawer beside the sheet (below it on a phone) with its result, and the drawer totals by group.

Pick a group before you draw

The group picker on the toolbar decides where the next shape goes. "Individual Measurement" drops it into Uncategorized with a name like rect 1 or polyline 2. A group has a name, a kind (area, length or count), a color and a category such as Flooring or Tiles. Create one from the picker or with New Group, and the tools that do not fit its kind grey out: an area group takes rectangles, polygons and deducts; a length group takes lengths; a count group takes counts. The color swatch beside the picker recolors the active group everywhere it appears.

The five tools

Rectangle. Drag over the area. It is committed when you let go.
Polygon. Click each corner. Double-click, press Enter, or click the first corner to close. Hold Shift to snap to 45 degree bearings; Backspace removes the last corner. An outline that crosses itself is refused, so fix the corner and try again.
Length. Click along the run and double-click or press Enter to finish. The running length shows as you draw. Shift snaps to 45 degree bearings, then to the snap increment.
Deduct. Select an area first, then drag a rectangle or click a polygon inside it. The deduct is stored on that area, so a window comes out of the siding it sits in.
Count. Opens the count column beside the tools: Undo last marker, Hand and Search. Count on its own places nothing. Pick Hand (M) and each click places one marker. Markers in one group on one sheet are one count, so ten taps on outlets make one row that reads 10.

Move (V) selects and edits. Drag a shape to move it, drag a corner to reshape it, drag the small dot on an edge to add a corner, press Delete to remove the selection, and hold Option or Alt while you drag to duplicate. Space and drag pans in every tool; the wheel zooms about the cursor. Escape drops back to Move and clears the selection. While you count, Backspace removes the last marker you placed.

Results, dimensions and totals

Each row in the drawer shows its colour, its name and one number, its total, with its unit. Point at the row, or tab to it, and a card opens beside the panel with the rest: what you drew before any dimension (square feet for an area, feet and inches for a length, the markers of a count), gross, openings and net on a wall, an area's perimeter, the room, the sheet, how the row was made and the dimensions set on it. On a touch screen, the arrow at the start of the row opens the same card. The cube beside the row's eye opens Add Dimension: Height or Width turns a length into wall area; Depth turns an area into cubic yards of concrete; Pitch (rise over 12) scales a roof plan by its slope; Multiplier repeats the subtotal for both faces of a wall or two identical rooms. The total is the subtotal times the multiplier.

A sheet whose scale is not confirmed shows "unscaled" instead of a number, everywhere. Confirm the scale from the banner or Settings and every result on the sheet fills in at once; recalibrating a sheet re-derives every result on it.

The drawer

Rows sit under their category, each header with an eye that hides the whole category on the sheet and leaves it out of every total; Hide all layers, in the list menu at the top, hides everything. Click a name to select it; double-click it to rename it. The three-dot menu on a row offers Move To, Duplicate, Convert to Perimeter (a linked length along an area's boundary, the area stays), Add opening, Hide (Show on a hidden row) and Delete. Select several rows (Shift-click for a run of them, Cmd or Ctrl-click to add one) and the row menu moves, hides or deletes them all together. A group's own menu, on its line in the drawer, renames or deletes the group. Delete group asks once and says how many measurements go with it ("Delete Walls and its 12 measurements?"). Confirming deletes the group and every measurement in it, on every sheet and plan set of the project. An opening cut into a deleted wall goes with the wall, a wall in another group loses the hole of a deleted window, and a carve-out whose area went stays as plain material. Undo does not bring a deleted group back. If it was the last group in its category, the category stays in the drawer, muted, until you delete the category itself from its own menu, which asks the same way and takes every group and measurement in it. Switch the drawer between this sheet and all sheets of the plan. A group total reads "unscaled" while any of its rows sits on a sheet whose scale is not confirmed, and "mixed units" when its rows do not share a unit.

Undo, saving and rotation

Cmd+Z undoes and Shift+Cmd+Z redoes every drawing, edit, rename, move and delete, including across saves. Changes save on their own a moment after you stop; a save that fails is retried and the drawer says so. A sheet that carries measurements cannot be rotated, because shapes are stored in the sheet's own pixels; delete them first if a sheet came in sideways. Rotate lives next to zoom in the header.

On a phone

The drawing tools need a tablet or desktop. On a phone you can pan, zoom, tap a shape to see its result, rename it and set its dimensions from the drawer, and tap to place count markers when a count group is active.

Keyboard

Cmd is Ctrl on Windows.

R rectangle, P polygon, L length, D deduct, C count, V move.
Cmd+Z undo, Shift+Cmd+Z redo, Delete removes the selection.
Cmd+D toggles the drawer, Shift+T the toolbar, Cmd+P the sheets rail, Cmd+F search.
Plus and minus zoom, 0 fits the sheet, bracket keys step sheets, Escape drops the tool.