Getting started

This guide takes you from a fresh install to a finished, exported takeoff. It should take about twenty minutes, and you only have to do most of it once.

If you read nothing else, read Step 4. Every area, length and volume in your takeoff is derived from the drawing scale, so a wrong scale means every quantity is wrong by the same factor.

Jump to Step 4: set the drawing scale

What PixelTakeoff does

PixelTakeoff turns construction PDFs into measured quantities. Point at what you want on a drawing and it measures it: areas of paving, lengths of edging, volumes of base, counts of fixtures.

It is a local-first desktop application. Your drawings live in a workspace folder on your own machine rather than being uploaded to a project server.

Step 1: install

On Windows

1. Run the installer you were sent.
2. You will see a “Windows protected your PC” message the first time. This is SmartScreen reacting to a new publisher, not a problem with the file. Click More info, then Run anyway.
3. Follow the installer prompts and launch PixelTakeoff.

On Mac

1. Open the .dmg you were sent and drag PixelTakeoff into Applications.
2. On first launch, right-click the app and choose Open, then confirm. This is macOS reacting to a new publisher, the same way SmartScreen does on Windows. If macOS still blocks it, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
3. This is only needed once. After the first launch, PixelTakeoff opens normally.

If your IT team screens software, give them the SHA-256 checksum supplied with your download so they can verify the file is exactly the one we published.

Step 2: activate your license

On first launch you will see the Activate your license screen.

1. Paste the 16-character key you were issued into License key.
2. Click Activate license.

An internet connection is needed to activate, as the screen notes. Your drawings and your takeoff stay in the workspace on your own machine either way.

A license is tied to one machine. Moving to a different computer is covered on the Settings page for the day you need it.

Moving to another computer

Step 3: create a project and add a drawing

After activation you land on the home screen: start or resume work on the left, the app’s health in the middle, and help on the right. For your first takeoff, the only thing you need on it is the New Project button.

The home screen: every card explained

Work is organised in three levels:

Project (a job, for example “Marina Villas”) contains Drawing Sets (a discipline or revision, for example “Hardscape” and “Softscape”), which contain Drawings (individual sheets).

Create the project

From the home screen, start a new project, give it a Project Name, and click Create Project.

Name it the way your business refers to the job. You will be searching these in a year, so “Marina Villas” beats a code only you recognise.

Add a drawing set

Inside the project, create a drawing set, give it a Drawing Set Name, and click Create Drawing Set.

Name it for the discipline, the way the plans are already split. On a landscape job that is typically “Hardscape” for one set and “Softscape” for another. When a revision arrives, keep it as its own set, for example “Hardscape Rev B”, which lets you compare revisions later instead of overwriting work.

Add your drawings

Open Add Drawings, then either drag your PDFs onto the drop area or click Browse Files. Several can be added at once.

Each drawing appears as a thumbnail in the drawing set once it is added. Click a thumbnail to open that drawing in the editor. Large sheets take longer to open the first time, and are faster on subsequent opens.

First time in the editor

Clicking a thumbnail lands you in the editor: toolbar on the left, the drawing in the middle, and the Region Editor panel on the right.

The first time a drawing opens, a short guided tour appears over the editor. It spotlights three things, one at a time, with Next between them:

1. Set your drawing scale, pointing at the scale control. The scale icon shows red while no scale is set.

   

2. Measurement units, pointing at the units and region settings, where you switch between metric and imperial and adjust settings such as colour tolerance.

   

3. Set up your quantity layers, pointing at the Layer Manager. If your drawing set already has layers saved in the Layer Manager, finishing the tour offers to import them into this drawing. On your first job there are no saved layers yet, so you will not see that offer.

   

The tour follows the same order as the steps below, so you can follow it live or dismiss it and read on. It only appears on a drawing’s first open. The Layer Manager it ends on has its own page, worth reading once your first takeoff is done.

Layer Manager guide

Tour of the editor

Step 4: set the drawing scale

Do this before you measure anything. PixelTakeoff will not let you create regions until a scale is set, because a measurement without a scale has no meaning.

You have two ways to set it.

If you know the scale

The Scale control in the top bar reads Not Set until you set one. Click the scale icon to open the Drawing scale dialog.

Pick your unit system (Metric, Imperial · Arch or Imperial · Eng), click the preset that matches the drawing, then click Apply scale. If your scale is not listed, use Custom Ratio underneath.

Architectural sheets normally print their scale in the title block.

If you do not know the scale, or the sheet has been resized

Calibrate from a known dimension instead: click Calibrate Scale beside the Scale control, measure something whose real length you know, and enter that length. This is the more reliable method, because PDFs are often scaled when printed or exported.

Full calibration walkthrough

Check it before you go further

Measure a second known dimension and confirm it reads correctly. Thirty seconds here protects the entire takeoff.

Caution

If you change the scale after measuring, PixelTakeoff recalculates every existing quantity on the drawing to match. You do not need to redo the work, but do re-check a value or two afterwards.

Step 5: set up your region

Before your first click, tell PixelTakeoff what you are about to measure. Three quick things, in order: verify the region settings, pick the kind of takeoff, then name it.

1. Verify Region Settings

The sliders button at the top of the right panel opens Region Settings, which control how the region tools behave. This is the control the first-open tour points at in its second step.

The defaults suit most drawings, so on a first takeoff a glance is enough:

Setting	Default
Unit System	Metric
Region Opacity	90%
Color Tolerance	8, on a range of 1 (Strict) to 50 (Loose)
Max Pixels	10M, the maximum

If you change anything, Save Settings applies it and Reset Defaults returns the values above. The one you will meet first is Color Tolerance, in Step 6 below, when a fill grabs too much or too little.

What each Region Setting does

2. Select Area in the new region form

The tabs at the top of the right panel choose the kind of takeoff: Area, Linear or Count. For your first takeoff stay on Area, with the Region tool (R) selected in the toolbar.

3. Name it and colour it

1. Type a Region Name, for example “Shrub”.
2. A colour is already chosen. Click the swatch beside the name to change it.

Name and colour together define a group, and groups carry the totals you price from. Everything you take off as “Shrub” in the same colour adds into one figure.

The strip under the name summarises what this group will record, for example A: m² · B: 2px: area in square metres, with Boundary Adjust at its default +2px, which nudges the measured boundary very slightly outward. Leave it unless you have a reason not to, and keep it consistent across a job.

That is all you need to start. A new region measures area only, since perimeter and volume are off by default. If this job needs either, turn them on now from the Measurement Settings gear beside the strip, rather than later, because they apply to work you do after setting them.

Setting up a new region: every setting and default

Step 6: take off your first area

Now click inside the area you want on the drawing.

Where you click matters. The tool reads the colour at the exact point you click, then spreads to every connected part of the drawing in that same colour, stopping where the colour changes. That connected patch becomes the region, so click on the material you want, not on a line, a label or a neighbouring shade.

Here the two planting shades touch, and one click on the darker shade picks up exactly that shape and nothing else:

Before, the shape as drawn:

After one click on the darker shape:

Repeat for each area of the same material. Every click adds to the same group total as long as the name and colour are unchanged.

Your region lands in Work in Progress

Each region you take off appears in the Work in Progress section of the right panel, under its group, with its quantity:

The group row carries the running total and the group actions, and each region inside it has its own row with a small picture of its shape, its own quantity, and its own controls. From here you can act on one region, on the whole group, or on a selection of several regions at once.

Groups, work in progress and saved layers

If the fill spreads too far or stops too early

The Color Tolerance setting controls how closely colours must match for the tool to treat them as the same area. It defaults to 8.

• Fill escaped into areas you did not want: lower the tolerance.
• Fill stopped short of where it should reach: raise it.

Adjust it in Region Settings, then click again. If a boundary on the drawing is broken (a gap in a line), use Manual Border (B) to draw a temporary barrier that closes the gap, then fill again.

Step 7: read your measurements

Each region shows its quantities, using the same symbols and icons everywhere in the app. Depending on what you have enabled, you may see:

	Symbol	Meaning	Units
	A	Area	m² (ft²)
	Pₙ	Net perimeter, the outer edge plus the edges of any holes	m (ft)
	Pₑ	External perimeter, the outer edge only	m (ft)
	Pᵥ	Void perimeter, the edges of holes only	m (ft)
	V	Volume	m³ (ft³)
	L	Linear length	m (ft)
	N	Count	number of items

Why perimeter is split three ways

Because the three price differently. Picture a lawn with planting beds cut into it:

• Pₑ is the edging around the outside of the lawn.
• Pᵥ is the edging around the beds.
• Pₙ is both together, the total edging you would order.

Getting a volume

• Set a depth on the group, from the Measurement Settings gear.
• Volume is area multiplied by depth.
• Worked example: 120 m² at 150 mm gives 18 m³.

Metric and imperial

• Switch between them at any time in Settings.
• Switching changes only how numbers are displayed, never what was measured, so it is always safe.

Step 8: the other takeoff tools

Areas are one of several kinds of quantity. Each of these has its own page in this documentation, but in short:

	Tool	Shortcut	Use it for
	Region	R	Standard enclosed areas
	Precision Region	P	Areas needing finer control over what is included
	Expand Region	X	Growing an existing region outward
	Inclusive Region	I	Pick the colours that count as part of the area, then take it off in one click
	Shape	S	Boxes, circles, ellipses and polygons drawn by hand
	Free Trace	F	Drawing freehand around an irregular area
	Color Sweep	D	Picking up every area sharing a colour at once
	Linear Region	L	Lengths: edging, kerbs, pipe runs, fencing
	Count	C	Placing markers on repeated items
	Auto Count	A	Finding every instance of a symbol automatically
	Find Pattern	G	Highlighting every place a detail or arrangement appears
	Eraser	E	Removing part of a region
	Zone	Z	Restricting a takeoff to part of the sheet, such as one phase
	Markup	M	Notes, clouds, callouts and highlights
	Inspect	V	Selecting anything without drawing
	Magnifier	H	Working accurately on dense drawings

Step 9: save your group into Layers

Every region belongs to a group defined by its name and colour. Groups are what you actually price from, since they carry the totals. A group lives in one of two places, and the difference matters:

• Work in Progress is the working area. A group here is yours to adjust freely: erase, reshape, undo and redo, all without touching anything else.
• Layers is committed work. A saved layer is protected: the eraser and the editing tools no longer touch it, so finished work cannot be damaged while you take off the next material.

Both count. Work in Progress and saved layers all appear in the totals, the summary and the exports, so saving does not change your numbers. What it changes is safety.

When a group looks right, save it:

1. Check the running total looks plausible.
2. Click Save Group on the group’s header in Work in Progress.
3. The group moves down into Layers, keeping its colour, its regions and its total.

Save a group as soon as it is right, so an erase meant for the next material can never take a bite out of the finished one. To change a saved layer later, Edit Group reopens it deliberately.

From the Layers panel you can still edit a saved group: rename or recolour it, hide it while you work on something else, reorder layers, and read its total. Hiding a layer takes it out of the visible drawing and out of the totals, which is a quick way to check one material in isolation, just remember to unhide everything before exporting.

Groups, work in progress and saved layers

Step 10: the summary table, and getting your numbers out

Your work saves as you go, on your own machine, with nothing for you to manage. Where it is stored and how to keep backups have their own page.

Projects, drawings and your workspace

The Takeoff Summary

Summary in the editor’s top bar opens the Takeoff Summary, one table of everything you have measured:

• One row per group, with its colour, its name and its quantities, so a reader can match a number to a colour on the drawing.
• Four tabs give different views: Overview, Details with a column per quantity, All Drawings consolidated across the set, and Per Drawing. Every tab has its own Export button producing CSV or Excel.
• Pin places the table onto the drawing itself, where you can drag and resize it. A pinned summary travels with the sheet when you export it, which is how a recipient reads quantities off a PDF without opening PixelTakeoff.

Exporting

Export, beside Summary in the top bar, opens the export options. The two you need first:

1. TakeOff Sheet produces a PDF of the drawing with your regions drawn on it and the summary included. This is what you send to a client or colleague.
2. Export the takeoff summary to Excel or CSV, from the Export button on any summary tab, when you want the numbers in a spreadsheet to price from.

There is more in that dialog, and you can also export from the Projects page: whole drawing sets, consolidated summaries across sheets, and workspace files for another PixelTakeoff user.

Summary, export and import

Where to go next

Setting the drawing scaleArea takeoffLinear takeoffCountingZonesSummary and export

Getting help

If something is not behaving as described here, go to Settings → Advanced → Export Support Bundle. That produces a single file containing diagnostic logs with no drawing content in it. Send it to support and it usually tells us straight away what went wrong.