What it's for
Plenty of work comes with a drawing before anyone's set foot on site. An extension, a refurb, a new bathroom or kitchen laid out on a plan, or a job a main contractor is pricing across several trades. Doing that by hand means reading dimensions off the sheet, working out areas, and counting fittings one by one. The app does that pass for you and turns it into priced line items.
It earns its keep for main contractors and multi-trade firms pricing a whole job, and for anyone quoting off an architect's plan rather than a walk-round.
What the app reads from a drawing
The app goes through the plan and pulls out:
- Rooms and layout. It works out the spaces on the plan and labels them.
- Dimensions and areas. Wall lengths and floor areas in m², read from the measurements on the drawing or its scale.
- Fittings and symbols. Sockets, switches, radiators, sanitaryware, and the other standard symbols marked on the sheet.
- Rough quantities. The counts and measurements that drive the line items, trade by trade.
You see the scope it found in plain English, fix anything that's not right, and the pricing engine builds the quote from there.
A quote per trade, or one for the lot
This is the bit that sets it apart. From one drawing the app can write a separate priced quote for each trade on the job: electrical, plumbing, plastering, tiling, and the rest. That way every subbie gets their own clean breakdown. Or it rolls all the trades into one global quote with a single total for the customer.
Per-trade quotes suit main contractors handing work to subcontractors, or anyone who needs the trades costed separately. The global quote suits putting one number in front of the customer for the whole job. You pick which you want, and you can edit either before it goes out.
Accuracy and how to check it
Drawing analysis is a quick first pass, not a full measured estimate. It's good for budget pricing and getting a job costed fast, and it gives you something solid to work from. Treat the quantities as a starting point. Check the ones that move the price, the areas, the runs, the counts, against the drawing before you send it.
Plans vary. A clear, scaled drawing with dimensions gives the best read. A rough sketch with no measurements gives the app less to go on, so you'll fill in more by hand. The clearer the drawing, the less you'll need to change.