Summary, export and import

Everything up to this point produces numbers on your screen. This page covers getting them out: the summary table, the exports it feeds, and how to move work between machines.

The takeoff summary

The Takeoff Summary collects every saved group and its quantities into one table.

Column	What it shows
Color	The group’s colour, for matching a row against the drawing
Region Name	The group name
Quantity	Its measured quantities

The colour column is what makes the table usable. A reader holding a printed sheet can match a row to what they are looking at without decoding names.

The Quantity column shows only the quantities a group actually has, so an area group shows an area and its perimeters, a linear group shows a length, and a count group shows a count. Symbols are as they appear elsewhere in the app:

A area, Pₙ net perimeter, Pₑ external perimeter, Pᵥ void perimeter, V volume, L length, A₁ and A₂ derived band areas, N count.

Summary and Details

Summary gives one row per group, which is what you price from and what most people want.

Details breaks a group into its individual items. Use it to find the one region making a group total look wrong, rather than deleting and remeasuring the lot.

Pinning the summary to the drawing

The summary can be pinned onto the drawing itself, so it travels with the sheet when exported. Position and size it where it does not cover anything important, usually a clear corner of the title block area.

A pinned summary is how a recipient reads quantities off a PDF without opening PixelTakeoff.

Exporting quantities

From the summary you can export to:

• CSV, comma separated, for opening anywhere
• Excel workbook, for pricing

Both offer two scopes:

• Per drawing, one sheet at a time
• All drawings, consolidated across the drawing set

Consolidated is what you want when a job spans several sheets and you are pricing the job rather than a sheet. Groups with the same name and colour total together across the set, so “Paving” measured across four sheets arrives as one figure.

Exported files are named with the drawing, the scope and the date, so a folder of exports stays readable weeks later.

Exporting a takeoff sheet

TakeOff Sheet produces a PDF of the drawing with your takeoff drawn on it. This is what you send to a client, a colleague or a subcontractor.

Options:

Option	Effect
Include Summary	Adds the quantity table to the sheet. Leave on unless you deliberately want a drawing without numbers.
Include Markups	Adds your annotations. Turn off for a clean quantities sheet, on when your notes and queries are the point.
Merged PDF	Combines several drawings into one file instead of one file per drawing.

Those two toggles let one takeoff serve two audiences. A clean sheet with quantities and no markup goes to the client, while the same takeoff with markups on goes to the design team carrying your queries.

Sharing your work with another PixelTakeoff user

Standalone PTW with PDF included produces a single workspace file containing both your takeoff and the drawing it was measured on.

Use it when the recipient also runs PixelTakeoff and needs the live takeoff rather than a flat PDF, for example a colleague continuing your work or reviewing your measurements. Because the drawing is inside the file, they do not need the original PDF.

PDF files only exports the underlying drawings without takeoff.

Importing

Adding drawings. Upload PDFs into a drawing set, or drag and drop them onto the drawing set. Group them into folders if a job has many sheets.

Opening a shared takeoff. A .ptw workspace file opens in PixelTakeoff directly, including by double clicking it. If it was exported with the PDF included, everything needed is in the one file.

Open as reference

Open as reference opens the current takeoff in a separate window while you keep working in the main one.

It is useful for cross checking one sheet against another, for keeping a detail visible while measuring the plan it belongs to, and for working across two monitors. The reference window can be refreshed to pick up work you have done since opening it.

Before you issue anything

A short checklist, because these are the mistakes that actually reach clients.

1. Unhide everything. A hidden group is excluded from totals, so it is missing from the export too. This is the most common cause of a short quantity.
2. Confirm the group list. Every material you meant to measure should be there. A missing group is easier to spot in the summary than on the drawing.
3. Sanity check the largest number. If the biggest quantity is plausible, the scale is almost certainly right, and if it is out by a factor then everything is.
4. Check the scale is set on every sheet. Scale is per drawing, so a sheet added later may still need it.
5. Decide on markups. Client sheet or design team sheet, they usually want different answers.
6. Open the exported PDF before sending it. Thirty seconds confirms the summary is legible, positioned sensibly and not covering the title block.

Common questions

My export is missing a material I definitely measured. It is hidden. Unhide it and export again.

The exported numbers do not match my screen. They are produced from the same totals, so check that the two are showing the same scope, since a per drawing export will not match an all drawings screen total.

Can I export just one zone? Yes, zone quantities are reported per zone. See Zones.

Which format should I send a client? A TakeOff Sheet PDF, with the summary included. It shows what was measured as well as how much, which a spreadsheet alone does not.

Can the recipient edit my takeoff? Only from a PTW workspace file, and only in PixelTakeoff. A PDF export is a flat record.