Troubleshooting
Ordered roughly by how often they come up.
The fill spread across the whole drawing
Section titled “The fill spread across the whole drawing”The boundary has a gap and the fill escaped through it.
Lowering Color Tolerance usually will not help, because the cause is a
genuine opening rather than a colour difference. Close the gap with
Manual Border (B), then fill again.
If the drawing is a floor plan and the fill ran through doorways, use Door-aware Fill from the canvas controls instead of bordering every opening.
Still escaping after one border? There is a second gap. Follow the edge of the runaway fill and you will find where it got out.
The fill picked up more than I wanted, but stayed contained
Section titled “The fill picked up more than I wanted, but stayed contained”Lower Color Tolerance in Region Settings and click again. Work in small steps, since a large jump usually trades one problem for the other.
If the two materials are genuinely almost the same colour, switch to
Precision Region (P) rather than continuing to fight the tolerance.
The fill stopped short
Section titled “The fill stopped short”Raise Color Tolerance. Hatched and textured areas usually need more than flat filled ones, because the hatch introduces variation the tool would otherwise read as a boundary.
The fill covers the area but misses the corners
Section titled “The fill covers the area but misses the corners”Check Max gap if CrossGuard is on. The higher it is set, the more likely the fill is to stop short of tight corners and narrow ends. Lower it to the smallest value that still keeps the fill contained and take the area off again, or patch the leftover slivers by hand with Shape into the same group.
The fill left a thin fringe around the edge
Section titled “The fill left a thin fringe around the edge”Use the eraser’s Boundary and Cutouts adjustment to tidy the edge rather than erasing and refilling.
Quantities
Section titled “Quantities”Everything is out by the same factor
Section titled “Everything is out by the same factor”The drawing scale is wrong. This is by far the most common cause of wrong numbers, and it is the first thing to check whenever quantities look off.
Recalibrate against a known dimension, then verify against a second one at the other end of the sheet.
A total is lower than the parts I can see
Section titled “A total is lower than the parts I can see”Something is hidden. A hidden group is excluded from totals as well as from the view, and so is a hidden item inside a group.
Unhide everything and check the total again. This is also the most common reason an export comes out short.
If the total on screen is right but the exported sheet is missing a group, that is a different setting: the In export column in the takeoff summary, or the Layers list in the export dialog. Excluded groups stay on the canvas and in the totals, and are only left out of the export.
The total is higher than expected
Section titled “The total is higher than expected”Look for work counted twice:
- A duplicated region left on top of its original counts twice, which is intended behaviour since a copy is treated as a second real item.
- A linear run traced twice, usually where a trace was restarted partway. The layer panel shows one row per run, so a group with more rows than you expect is worth opening.
- In counting, one symbol matched twice by Auto Count. Raise Duplicate Distance and run it again.
A quantity did not update after I edited
Section titled “A quantity did not update after I edited”Quantities recalculate as you work. If a number looks stale, check you are reading the group you actually changed, and that no filter or hidden state is affecting what you are looking at.
Zone totals do not add up to the sheet total
Section titled “Zone totals do not add up to the sheet total”Check whether zones overlap. Shared ground is counted once and attributed to the zone drawn first, which is deliberate so that zone totals cannot exceed the sheet. Also check whether some takeoff sits outside every zone.
Drawings
Section titled “Drawings”The drawing is slow
Section titled “The drawing is slow”Large sheets take longest on first open and are quicker afterwards. Lowering drawing quality helps if you do not need fine detail to click accurately.
Hiding groups you are not working on also helps on a dense drawing.
The drawing looks soft or the text is hard to read
Section titled “The drawing looks soft or the text is hard to read”Turn on Crisp from the canvas controls. If materials are hard to tell apart, try Hueprint.
Hueprint says the PDF has no layer information
Section titled “Hueprint says the PDF has no layer information”Hueprint needs the layer information that design software can save inside a PDF. If the PDF was exported without it, the drawing returns to Normal view. Re-export the PDF with PDF layers enabled, then import it again.
Where the export option lives, by software
An area shows <0.01
Section titled “An area shows <0.01”The region is real but smaller than the displayed precision, so it shows as <0.01 rather than a misleading 0. Group totals still include its exact value.
A region this small is usually an accidental click on a boundary line rather than a real area, so inspect it and delete or redo it if it was not intended.
A control says “Not available for this drawing”
Section titled “A control says “Not available for this drawing””That feature does not apply to this sheet. It is not an error.
I cannot create a region
Section titled “I cannot create a region”The drawing scale is not set. You will see a message saying so. Set the scale first, since a measurement without one has no meaning.
The app
Section titled “The app”“The takeoff engine is offline”
Section titled ““The takeoff engine is offline””The engine that performs measurement work stopped unexpectedly. PixelTakeoff tries to restart it automatically, and in most cases a message that it is recovering is followed shortly by one saying it is back. Retry whatever you were doing.
If the message says it is offline and asks you to restart, close and reopen PixelTakeoff. Your saved work is unaffected. If it keeps happening, send a support bundle.
Windows warned me about the installer
Section titled “Windows warned me about the installer”Windows shows “Windows protected your PC” for software from a new publisher. Click More info, then Run anyway. Your IT team can verify the file against the SHA-256 checksum supplied with your download.
macOS will not open the app
Section titled “macOS will not open the app”macOS blocks software from a new publisher on first launch. Right-click the app in Applications and choose Open, then confirm. If it is still blocked, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. This is only needed once.
My license will not activate
Section titled “My license will not activate”Check the key was pasted in full with no trailing space. A license is tied to one machine, so if you have changed computers, contact support to release the seat.
Sending a support bundle
Section titled “Sending a support bundle”If something is not behaving as documented, go to Settings → Advanced → Export Support Bundle.
That produces a single file of diagnostic logs. It excludes your license key, your file contents and your project names, so it carries no drawings and no takeoff. Turn on Enable detailed logging and restart the app first if the problem is reproducible, since the fuller logs usually settle it in one round.
Send it with a short note about what you were doing and what you expected, and it usually identifies the cause straight away.
The most useful note is a specific one. “Area stopped changing after I erased twice on the paving group” is far more actionable than “quantities are wrong”.