Glossary
Quantity symbols
Section titled “Quantity symbols”These appear next to every group and in the summary table.
| Symbol | Name | What it is | Units | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | A | Area | The measured area of a region | m² (ft²) |
 | Pₙ | Net perimeter | The outer edge plus the edges of every hole. The total length of edge on the item. | m (ft) |
 | Pₑ | External perimeter | The outer edge only, ignoring holes | m (ft) |
 | Pᵥ | Void perimeter | The edges of holes only | m (ft) |
 | V | Volume | Area multiplied by depth | m³ (ft³) |
 | L | Length | The measured length of a linear run | m (ft) |
| A₁ | Band area | Length multiplied by the width you set | m² (ft²) | |
| A₂ | Second band area | Length multiplied by a second width | m² (ft²) | |
| N | Count | Number of markers | number of items |
Why perimeter is split three ways
Section titled “Why perimeter is split three ways”Because the three price differently.
Picture a lawn with two planting beds cut into it. Pₑ is the edging around the outside of the lawn. Pᵥ is the edging around the two beds. Pₙ is both added together, which is the total edging you would actually order.
Which you use depends on the item. Mowing strip around the outside is Pₑ. All edging on the job is Pₙ.
Region. A single measured area. Several regions of the same name and colour form a group.
Group. A name and colour together. Groups carry the totals you price from. Everything measured as “Paving” in the same colour totals into one figure.
Layer. A saved group, shown in the saved layers section of the right panel.
Work in progress. New takeoff before you commit it. A staging area you can adjust freely, with its own undo and redo per group.
Zone. A boundary drawn over the drawing that reports quantities for what falls inside it. Used to split one sheet by phase, block or plot.
Clipped. In a zone, a group whose takeoff crosses the zone boundary, so the quantity shown is the part inside rather than the whole.
Linear region. A measured length rather than an area. Edging, kerbs, pipe runs, fencing.
Count marker. A numbered marker placed on a repeated item. The total counts markers, so gaps in the numbering after a deletion are harmless.
Template. In Auto Count and Find Pattern, the example you select for PixelTakeoff to find the rest of.
Find Pattern. A tool that highlights every place a detail or arrangement appears on the drawing. It locates rather than measures, so its results never enter quantities.
Batch Takeoff. Taking off many separate areas in one action by placing a dot in each first. Three modes: Multi, Merge and Unmerge.
Color Tolerance. How closely colours must match for the tool to treat two parts of the drawing as the same area. Range 1 to 50, default 8. Lower it when a fill grabs too much, raise it when a fill stops short.
CrossGuard. A setting on Expand Region and Inclusive Region that keeps a fill inside the boundary you can see, so it does not escape through a broken line. Its Max gap value sets how much imperfection it allows for.
Hueprint. A view that makes materials which look alike on the drawing easy to tell apart and easy to select. It needs a PDF that still carries its layer information, and it changes only what you see, never a quantity.
Manual border. A temporary boundary you draw to close a gap so a fill stays where it should. Never measured, and never appears in quantities.
Markup. Annotation: notes, clouds, callouts, highlights. Never measured.
Scale. The drawing’s ratio, for example 1:100. Converts what you measure on the sheet into real world quantities. Set per drawing, not per project.
Calibration. Setting the scale by measuring something whose real length you know, rather than typing a scale in. More reliable, because PDFs are often resized when printed or exported.
Drawing quality. How much detail the sheet is displayed with. Affects how accurately you can see and click, not what a measurement converts to.
Project, drawing set, drawing. The three levels work is organised in. A project is a job, a drawing set is a discipline or revision within it, and a drawing is one sheet.
Takeoff sheet. A PDF export of the drawing with your takeoff drawn on it, optionally with the quantity summary and your markups.
PTW. A PixelTakeoff workspace file. Exported with the drawing included, it carries a live takeoff to another PixelTakeoff user.
Support bundle. A file of diagnostic logs produced from Settings → Advanced. Excludes your license key, file contents and project names, so it carries no drawings and no takeoff.
Areas are shown in m², ft² or yd². Lengths and perimeters in m or ft. Volumes in m³ or ft³. Depths in mm or inches.
Switching units changes how numbers are displayed and never what was measured, so you can move between metric and imperial freely without any risk to your quantities.