Working aids

These do not produce quantities. They help you work accurately and check what you have done.

📐 Measure Width (W)

Measures a distance on the drawing without recording it as takeoff.

Click one end, click the other, read the length. Useful for confirming something matches a stated dimension, or for a quick figure you do not need in your quantities. Nothing is recorded.

Its best use is verifying the scale. After setting a scale, measure a known dimension with this and confirm it reads what it should. Fifteen seconds, and it is the difference between a takeoff you can trust and one you cannot.

Note

Measure Width checks distances; it does not set the scale. Setting the scale by measuring a known dimension is a separate route, the Calibrate Scale button beside the Scale control. See Setting the drawing scale.

👆 Inspect (V)

Selects anything without drawing anything.

With any takeoff tool active, clicking is an action. Inspect lets you click purely to select and examine, so you can pick a region and read its quantity, or select an item to delete or edit, with no risk of adding takeoff by accident.

Switch to Inspect when you are reviewing rather than measuring. It is the safe tool to have selected while you are reading through your work.

🔍 Magnifier (H)

Shows a magnified view of the area under your cursor while you work.

Use it on dense drawings where you need to click precisely but do not want to zoom the whole canvas in and lose your overview. It is particularly useful when tracing a line among several close together, or when placing count markers on tightly packed symbols.

Accuracy of your clicks carries straight into your quantities, so on fiddly drawings the magnifier is worth having on.

3D plan view

Shows your takeoff as a three dimensional plan, using the depths you have set on your groups.

Two things it is good for:

Sanity checking volumes. Depth errors are hard to spot in a list of numbers and obvious in three dimensions. A build up that is clearly too deep relative to everything around it stands out immediately.

Showing a client. A 3D view communicates what has been measured far better than a table, particularly to someone who does not read drawings.

It is a view of your existing takeoff, so it changes nothing and measures nothing.

Crisp and Hueprint

Both are display controls on the canvas, covered in Tour of the editor.

Crisp sharpens the drawing so fine lines and small text are easier to read.

Hueprint re-presents the drawing so different elements are easier to tell apart and select, which helps most where materials are hard to distinguish by eye.

Neither changes any quantity. They change what you can see, which changes how accurately you can work.

Open as reference

Opens your takeoff in a second window while you keep working in the first.

Use it to cross check one sheet against another, to keep a detail visible while measuring the plan it belongs to, or to spread work across two monitors. It can be refreshed to pick up work done since you opened it.

Choosing between them

You want to	Use
Check a distance	Measure Width (W)
Set the scale from a known dimension	Calibrate Scale, beside the Scale control
Verify a scale you have already set	Measure Width (W)
Click without measuring	Inspect (V)
Click precisely on a dense sheet	Magnifier (H)
Check depths look right	3D plan view
Read a soft or faint drawing	Crisp
Tell similar materials apart	Hueprint
Compare two sheets	Open as reference