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Building spec sheets

Plans and sheets

Keep the plan set with the project, see every sheet rendered in the browser, search the sheets that have text, and set the scale on each sheet.

Updated September 16, 2026 · 5 min read

Rooms tell the app how big a space is. Plans are where those numbers come from. The Takeoff tab under a project holds the plan set so you can look at it where the job lives, instead of digging through email for the PDF the architect sent in March.

Upload a plan set

Open a project and pick Takeoff in the sidebar. Upload the PDF, or a PNG or JPG if all you have is a photo of one sheet; an image becomes a one-sheet plan.

The sheets render in your browser, not on a server, at a working resolution of 3000 px on the long edge. A progress row appears for every sheet as it renders and uploads. If a sheet fails, its row says so and a Retry failed sheets button re-renders just those sheets; the plan stays marked as uploading until every sheet has landed. The file does not have to be picked again for a retry while the upload panel is still open. If you leave the page mid-upload, the plan row lists the sheet numbers that are missing, and uploading the same file again fills them in.

What renders and what is kept

Every sheet is stored as a working raster plus a small thumbnail for the sheet rail. The original PDF is kept alongside them only when it is 8 MB or smaller. Over that, the sheets are kept and the plan card says the original was not kept, so hang on to your own copy. A PNG or JPG is never kept as an original; the rendered sheet is the record.

Some plan sets have no text layer at all. Outlined fonts and scanned sheets look fine on screen, but there is nothing behind the pixels to read. On those sheets, search finds nothing and the app cannot read the scale from the title block. Use Find Scale instead; it works on any sheet from a tablet or desktop, and a preset works everywhere.

Set the scale on a sheet

Nothing measures until a sheet has a confirmed scale, and every sheet carries its own. Open Settings from the gear in the header and pick a preset: the common architectural scales from 1/8" = 1'-0" up to 1" = 1'-0", plus 1:50, 1:100 and 1:200 for metric sets.

When a sheet has a text layer, the app reads the scale printed in the title block and fills it in for you. That reading lands unconfirmed, with a banner across the sheet that shows what it read. Confirm it if it matches the sheet, or use Find Scale if it does not. Nothing measures on an unconfirmed sheet.

Find Scale is for the sheets a preset cannot cover. Draw one line over a length you know, a dimension string or a door opening, and type the feet and the inches as printed (or millimetres on a metric sheet). Most plan sets share one scale, so Set on all sheets is the usual action: it writes this sheet and every sheet that is not yet confirmed. This sheet only is there when a sheet really is different.

The unit toggle in Settings changes how lengths display. It does not change the scale or anything stored on the sheet.

Search a sheet

Type in the search box on the sheet rail and every match on the current sheet is marked on the sheet, with the count under the box. Search reads the text layer of the sheet you are on, so it is only as good as the PDF: a vector set from CAD searches well, a scan does not search at all.

Pin the sheets you keep coming back to. Pinned sheets stay at the top of the rail.

Rotate a sheet

A sheet that arrived sideways rotates in quarter turns from the rotate buttons in the header, next to zoom. The rotation is applied to the stored sheet, so it sticks the next time you open it. A sheet that already carries measurements cannot be rotated; delete them first.

What each tier allows

Plan sets are on Starter and up. Starter holds 3 plans per project with up to 20 sheets each. Pro holds 25 plans per project with up to 60 sheets each. Studio holds 100 plans per project with up to 200 sheets each. An account without a paid plan still shows the Takeoff tab, and the upload control opens the upgrade wall.

The sheet cap is checked twice: once when the plan is created, against the sheet count the browser reports, and again as each sheet uploads. A set that goes over the cap does not get partway in.

Deleting a plan removes its sheets and every file behind them, including the original PDF if it was kept. There is no undo. The app never hands a plan set back as a download, not even to the person who uploaded it, so keep your own copy of the PDF.

On a phone

On a phone you can open a plan, pan and zoom a sheet, move through the rail, search, and apply a scale preset. Drawing the Find Scale line needs a pointer, so that control asks for a tablet or a desktop.