Take-Off: quantities from a 3D model
When the drawing is a model, not a page
Why this one matters
When the architect sends a model rather than a set of drawings, the quantities are already in it. Somebody measured when they drew it. Measuring it again on a printout is work you are doing because the tools would not talk to each other.
And when the design changes, the model tells you what moved — which is the part a scale rule has never been able to do.
What you will see
- A real architect’s model opened in the browser, no extra software
- Element types listed with their counts and areas already worked out
- Figures sent to take-off fields and on into the estimate
- A second revision compared against the first, with what changed listed
What was said
The narration, word for word, for anyone who would rather read it than watch it — or who is on a train.
If your designer works in Revit or ArchiCAD, ask them for an I-F-C file. Open it in Take-Off and the quantities are already in it.
Every kind of element is listed — walls, slabs, roofs, doors, windows — with how many there are and their main quantities.
The Rooms tab lists every room in the model, with its storey, its floor area and the length around it. Click one and it lights up in the model. Floor areas and room perimeters are just what you need for floor coverings, skirting and ceilings.
Click a type and you see every figure the model holds for it: its area, its length, its volume.
Only this type hides everything else, so you can check you have the right walls before you send a figure. And Find a type narrows the list as you type, which helps on a big model with a hundred types.
Send a figure to a take-off field. The field remembers where it came from, so your items price off the model.
Hide the roof to look inside, and choose a storey to see one floor at a time.
Send many lists every type beside the figure it would send and the field it goes to, so you can send them all in one go instead of one by one. Fill empty rows with new fields makes a field for each type that has none yet. And Schedule downloads the doors and windows by type, size and storey, as a file Excel opens, ready to send to your joinery supplier.
When the designer sends a revised model, nothing changes by itself. A notice tells you how many figures have moved.
Open it, see what each figure was and what it is now, and update the ones you agree with.
Doing it, rather than watching it
This page is the tour. When you are in SmarteBuild with a job open and need the detail — every option, every exception, the things the video had no time for — the help centre has the full article.
Models from IFC — the full reference
Read about it instead: Take-Off · Documents & Drawings · Bill of Quantities
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