The Hueprint workflow

Most of this documentation gives you a tool per situation. This page is different. It describes one way of working that, on the right drawing, takes off most of a sheet with a single tool.

Three things combine:

	What it brings
Hueprint	Materials that were hard to tell apart by eye become easy to tell apart and easy to select
Inclusive Region	You choose which colours count as part of the area, then take it off in one click
CrossGuard	Keeps that one click inside the boundary you can see

Separately each is useful. Together they change how a sheet is measured: instead of clicking area after area and correcting as you go, you tell PixelTakeoff what the material looks like and take the whole material off at once.

Here is a landscape sheet in Normal view. The paving, the planting beds and the surrounds are all drawn in the same grey, and the hatching runs through all of them:

The same drawing in Hueprint. Nothing has moved and nothing has been measured yet, but every material is now something you can point at:

The second sheet is the one worth taking off. Every material on it is now something Inclusive Region can be told to collect.

Hueprint is PixelTakeoff’s own view of a drawing, and is patent pending.

It depends entirely on one thing

The PDF must carry its layer information.

Design software knows which parts of a drawing are paving, which are planting and which are kerbs, because the drawing was built that way. That knowledge can be saved inside the PDF, and Hueprint needs it. Most PDFs that reach an estimator have had it thrown away at export, and once it is gone it cannot be recovered from the file.

So the single highest value thing you can do before starting a job is to get a PDF that still has it.

Ask for it up front

If the drawings come from someone else, ask for them exported with PDF layers enabled. It costs the sender nothing, it changes nothing about how the sheet looks or prints, and it is far quicker than asking again halfway through a takeoff. Worth putting in the same message as your request for the drawings.

Where the option lives

Names vary between products and versions, so the reliable move is to search your software’s help for “PDF layers”. These are the usual places:

Software	Look for
AutoCAD and AutoCAD based products such as Civil 3D	An Include layer information option. It sits with the PDF plotter’s properties when you plot, and the same switch appears in the PDF export options
Adobe Illustrator	Create Acrobat Layers from Top-Level Layers, in the Save as PDF options. It needs the compatibility set to Acrobat 6 or later
Vectorworks	The PDF export options include a setting for exporting layers and classes as PDF layers
ArchiCAD	The PDF save options include a setting for creating PDF layers
MicroStation	The print and PDF export settings include a create PDF layers option
Revit, SketchUp and LayOut	These may not offer it at all. If not, ask for a PDF produced from the CAD file rather than from the model

How to check a PDF has it

Do this before you start measuring, not after.

1. Open the drawing.
2. Press Ctrl + 6, or click Hueprint in the canvas controls.
3. If the drawing changes, the layer information is there and this workflow is available.
4. If you are told the PDF has no layer information and the drawing returns to Normal view, it is not. Go back and ask for a re-export, or measure the sheet with the ordinary area tools.

A scan, a photograph of a drawing, or a PDF that has been printed and scanned again will never have it, whatever the sender does.

The workflow

Once a drawing passes that check:

1. Set the scale. Nothing can be measured without it, and this workflow measures a lot at once.
2. Switch to Hueprint (Ctrl + 6). Give it a moment on a large sheet.
3. Select Inclusive Region (I).
4. Name and colour the group before you click anything, since name and colour are what carry the total.
5. Collect the colours of the material. In the Inclusive Colors panel, leave Auto selected and click on the material on the drawing. Use Manual to add any it missed.
6. Read the list. Everything under Pass-Through Colors counts as part of the area. Take out anything that belongs to a boundary rather than to the material.
7. Turn on CrossGuard (⇧X) and leave Max gap at 8 to start with.
8. Click inside the material. Everything made of those colours comes off in one action.
9. Check the result, particularly the corners, and patch anything left behind.
10. Save the group and start the next material.

The panel while you work, with a material’s colours collected and CrossGuard waiting underneath them:

From step 4 onward each material is four clicks and a check, however many separate areas of it there are on the sheet.

And the result of step 8. One click, and the whole material comes off, holding the curved edge against the planting beds and the water feature on either side:

Why the three need each other

Hueprint without Inclusive Region is just an easier drawing to look at. You would still be clicking area by area.

Inclusive Region without Hueprint works, but you are choosing colours from the drawing as the designer happened to produce it. Where two materials are drawn in similar tones, the colours you pick for one will collect the other as well.

Either without CrossGuard is the one that costs you time. A single click that is meant to take off every instance of a material is also a single click that can escape through one broken boundary line and take off half the sheet. CrossGuard is what makes a big fill safe to attempt.

Tuning it

Max gap is remembered separately for Normal view and for Hueprint, because a drawing behaves differently in each. Setting it in one does not change the other, so expect to set it once per view rather than once per drawing.

Keep it as low as it can go. A high setting is more likely to leave tight corners and narrow ends unfilled, which is quiet area missing from your quantity.

CrossGuard and Max gap

Colours are per material, not per sheet. Clear the list and collect again for the next material rather than adding to what is already there, or the second takeoff will include the first.

When to use something else

This workflow is not the answer to everything.

• No layer information, and no way to get a re-export. Use the ordinary area tools.
• The sheet is a scan. Same answer, and Crisp will help you see it.
• One or two areas of a material. Setting up colours is worth it for a material that appears many times, not for a single courtyard. Use Region.
• Hatched areas in Normal view. Expand Region is the tool built for those.

Area takeoff

Common questions

Does Hueprint change my drawing or my quantities? No. It changes how the sheet is presented to you while you work. What you measure and what you export are unaffected, and you can switch back at any time.

Can I take off in Hueprint and review in Normal view? Yes. Your takeoff belongs to the drawing, not to the view, so switch between them freely.

The fill collected two materials at once. They share a colour on your list. Remove the colour they have in common, or take the smaller material off first and let the region rules keep the second fill out of ground already measured.

The fill escaped across the sheet. A boundary colour is on the list, so the fill treats the boundary as part of the area. Take it off the list. If it escapes with the list correct, the boundary itself is broken, so raise Max gap a little or close the gap with Manual Border.

Nothing happened when I clicked. You clicked on something whose colour is not on the list. Add it, or click somewhere more typical of the material.