When to count by hand
Automatic detection needs a symbol that looks the same every time. Plenty of drawings do not oblige:
- Hand-marked or heavily annotated scans, where every symbol has been drawn or written slightly differently.
- Items that are not symbols at all — a fixing point circled in pen, an item called out only by a leader and a note.
- A handful of things. If there are six of something, clicking six times beats outlining one and checking what came back.
- Anything a capture keeps getting wrong. When two captures in a row miss half the copies, hand counting is the shorter road.
Count Symbol places a coloured dot wherever you click and keeps a running total. The result is a Count group in the sidebar, which prices, totals and exports exactly like a Detection group.
Where it is
Open New Takeoff in the workspace header. Under Takeoff, choose Count Symbol , or press ⌥+C (OPTION+C on a Mac).
Counting
- 1
Choose New Takeoff › Count Symbol. A new group appears in the sidebar named Unit 1, and the header shows Current Tool: unit.
- 2
Click each item on the drawing. A dot is placed in the group's colour and the count on the row goes up with every click.
- 3
Pan and zoom as you go. Drag on empty canvas to pan, and use the mouse wheel to zoom towards the cursor.
- 4
Press Esc or right-click when you have finished the run.
Rename the group before you start rather than after. Click the group's name in the sidebar and type what you are counting. It is far easier to keep track of three counts called "Emergency luminaire", "Exit sign" and "Fire door" than "Unit 1", "Unit 2" and "Unit 3".
Continuous
The tool stays armed after each click, so a run of items is one continuous pass. That behaviour comes from the Continuous option at the top of the New Takeoff menu, which is on by default and applies to linear, area, count and Auto Count alike.
Turn it off and the tool disarms after every single dot, which is worth doing only when you are placing one at a time in different parts of a sheet.
Press Esc to stop at any point.
Adjusting the dots
Click the colour swatch at the left of the group's row to open its settings.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Size | How large the dots are drawn, from 5 to 200. Make them small on a dense plan, large on a sparse one. |
| Opacity | How solid they are, from 5 to 100. Drop it to read the drawing underneath. |
| Colour grid | Eleven preset colours plus a custom colour cell. |
Click Apply to commit. Closing the popover without applying discards the change.
Size and colour are per group, so two counts on one drawing can be told apart at a glance.
Adding to a count you already have
Click the button on the group's row. Hovering it reads Adding counts to this group..., and every click adds another dot to that group instead of starting a new one. Press Esc to stop.
The same button on a Detection group's row adds hand-placed counts to that group — useful for the copies a capture could not find. See Adding to an existing group.
Correcting a miscount
- Delete one — click the dot on the drawing to select it, then press Delete.
- Delete several — hold CTRL and drag a box round them, then press Delete.
- Move one — drag it. Counting stays the same; only the position changes.
- Move it to another group — expand both groups in the sidebar and drag the child row across, or use Merge into on the group's menu to move the whole group.
Counting something you already have a price for
Under Linked Takeoff in the New Takeoff menu, Count Symbol — or ⇧+⌥+C — opens the Database Items window first. Pick the catalogue item, and the group the tool creates is already linked to it, so it prices from the first click.
See Linked takeoff.
Next steps
- Detect New Symbol — try counting the symbol automatically before you do it by hand.
- Adding to an existing group — top up a detection group with the copies it missed.
- Managing groups — rename, duplicate and delete the groups you create.
- Linked takeoff — count straight against a catalogue item.
- Keyboard shortcuts — the full list, including the linked variants.