Every button, panel and dialog, grouped by what you are trying to get done.
Each one says what it is for, how to use it, and what it looks like on a
real drawing. Nothing here is a mock-up — every picture is taken from
the app working on the
sample set you can download,
at that sheet's own scale, so the numbers in them are numbers you can check.
If you would rather be walked through one takeoff start to finish, read the
step-by-step guide instead. This
page is the reference you come back to.
Find it by name
Or scroll — the page runs in the order you would actually use things.
The toolbar runs along the top in labeled groups, the sheets are down the
left, the panels are down the right, and the status bar is along the
bottom. If you know roughly which group a thing lives in, you will find it.
File — open, save, report
Open a set, reopen a job, save a PDF, put a legend on the sheet, or print
a summary of the takeoff.
Find — search, size, split, compare
Search the set, draw a shape to a typed size, put two sheets side by
side, or compare one revision against another.
Drawing — everything that marks the sheet
Text, callouts, pen, lines, arrows, shapes, clouds, highlighter, notes,
numbered bubbles, images and dimensions. None of these measure anything.
Measurements — everything that produces a number
Scale, regions, spaces, lengths, perimeters, areas, radii, diameters,
angles, the flood fill, and the two ways to count. Everything here lands
in the Takeoff List.
Start here: tell it what the drawing's scale is
Rollset will draw and mark up without a scale, but it will not measure
until it knows one. Setting it takes about five seconds and it is the
difference between a number you can bid and a number you cannot.
Set scale
Drag along something on the sheet whose real length you know, then type
what it is. A printed dimension string is ideal; the graphic scale bar in
the corner works just as well.
Click Set scale in the Measurements group.
Drag from one end of a known dimension to the other.
Type the real length — 60', 24'-6", 3500 mm — and choose the units.
Leave Apply to all sheets ticked if the whole set is at one scale. Untick it if it is not.
If you would rather not measure anything, the same dialog lists the
common architectural and engineering scales — 1/8" = 1'-0" and the
rest — and you can just pick one.
Dragging along the 60′ slab on A-101 of the sample set and typing what it is.
Watch out for per-sheet scales. Site plans and details are very
often drawn at a different scale from the floor plans in the same set.
The sample set has this trap in it on purpose: A-103 is at 1" = 30'-0"
while the others are at 1/8" = 1'-0". Set the scale from each sheet's own
bar rather than assuming.
Region scale
For a detail drawn at its own scale in the corner of a sheet. Drag a box
round the detail and give that box its own scale; anything you measure
inside it uses that scale instead of the sheet's.
A region keeps its own scale, so an enlarged detail does not poison the sheet.
Measuring
Every measurement carries a subject, totals itself with everything else of
the same subject, and lands as one row in the Takeoff List.
Length Shift+Alt+L
A straight run between two points. Click each end, or drag. It is tipped
with an arrowhead at each end so you can tell it apart from a plain line
on a busy sheet.
Across the 60′ slab — the reading sits in the line, where you are already looking.
Perimeter Shift+Alt+P
A run of several legs — curb, gutter, footing, fence, base trim.
Click each corner and press Enter to finish. It totals the run
you actually drew and leaves it open.
If you want the side back to the start counted as well, tick
Close the loop in Properties. It is off by default because three
sides of a building is a real thing to measure and an accidental fourth
side is a real way to overbid.
Two sides of the 60 × 40 slab: 40 + 60 = 100′, open, not closed.
Area Shift+Alt+A
Click each corner and press Enter to close the shape. It reads
one number, in the sheet's units, in the middle of what it measures.
Give it a depth in Properties and it will also carry a volume, and a wall
area if that is what you are after — but it still prints one figure
on the drawing, because five numbers stacked on a shape is a row nobody
reads.
The 60 × 40 slab reads 2,400 sf — the figure published in the sample set's answer key.
Flood Area Shift+F
The one that saves the most time. Instead of tracing a room corner by
corner, click once inside it and Rollset finds the walls itself and fills
to them.
Click Fill in the Measurements group.
Move the pointer inside the room — anywhere in the middle is fine.
Click once. The fill spreads to the walls and reads its area.
Rooms leak. Doorways, missing lines and gaps where two walls nearly meet
will all let the fill escape into the corridor. Set Gap to close in
Properties — it bridges openings up to that width, so a 3′
doorway stops being a hole. Start small and raise it: too large a gap will
jump a wall you meant to keep.
Before: one click inside.After: filled to the inside face, and measured.
The fill reads 2,375 sf here against 2,400 sf for the slab
outline, and both are right — the fill found the inside face
of the perimeter footing, which is what you would want for a floor
finish. Know which face you are measuring to.
Center radius Shift+Alt+R
Click the center, then any point on the circle.
Diameter Shift+Alt+D
Click each end of the diameter, or drag straight across the circle.
Radius from three points Shift+Alt+3
Click any three points along an arc and Rollset works out the circle they
belong to. Use this whenever you cannot see where the center is, which on
a curved curb or a bay window is most of the time.
Three points on the arc; the center is worked out for you.
Angle Shift+Alt+G
Click along one arm, then the corner, then along the other. It needs no
scale at all — degrees are degrees whether or not the sheet has been
calibrated.
Dimension Shift+L
A dimension string you add to the drawing yourself: click each end, then
type what it reads. Use it to record a size you were given rather than one
you measured — a field dimension, a number off an email.
Counting
Count Shift+Alt+C
Click each item. Every click adds a numbered mark and the tally goes up.
The whole run is one markup holding all the points, not one markup
per click — so it is one row in the Takeoff List, and deleting it
removes the count rather than leaving orphans behind.
Set a multiplier in Properties when one symbol means more than one thing:
a duplex receptacle counted as two, a fitting that always comes as a pair.
The five plumbing fixtures on A-102 — the number the sample set publishes.
Count every match
Drag a box round one symbol and Rollset finds every other copy of
it on the sheet. On a lighting plan with two hundred diffusers this is the
difference between twenty minutes and twenty seconds.
It does not count anything straight away. Every candidate it found is
drawn on the sheet for you to look at first, with a banner telling you how
many there are. Click any mark you do not want and it drops out; click it
again and it comes back. Only when you press Count does it become a
tally on the drawing.
Candidates, for review.Accepted — now one tally.
The banner: how many, how fussy to be, and nothing counted until you say so.
It matches the symbol as drawn, including which way round it is. On
the sample set's floor plan there are seven doors, and a box round one of
them finds five — exactly the five that swing the same way. The two
on the demising wall are turned ninety degrees, so they are a second run:
box one of those and count them too. That is the tool being careful rather
than being wrong, and it is why the review step exists.
Small symbols are harder than big ones. A circle a few points across with
a hairline stroke may not be found at all; if a run comes back empty, drop
the sensitivity, box the symbol more tightly, or count that one by hand.
Drawing and marking up
None of these measure anything. They are for saying something on the sheet
— to a sub, to the architect, or to yourself in three weeks.
Line L
Click once to start and again to finish, or drag.
Arrow A
A line that already has its head on. Click to start, click at the thing you are pointing at.
Rectangle R
Click one corner and again for the opposite one, or drag.
Ellipse E
Two opposite corners of the box it fits in, clicked or dragged.
Revision cloud C
Two corners, like a rectangle. For flagging what changed.
Polygon Shift+P
Click each corner, Enter to close. Set its edge to Revision cloud in Properties for a cloud that is not a rectangle.
Polyline Shift+N
Click each point, Enter to finish. An open run of straight legs.
Arc Shift+C
Drag the chord, then click to set how much it bulges.
Pen P
Freehand. Useful on a tablet, and for circling something in a hurry.
Highlighter H
A translucent band over what is underneath. Drag a box, or click two opposite corners.
Text Shift+T
Click anywhere and type. The writing sits straight on the sheet with no box round it.
Text box T
Same, but in a box that wraps. Click or drag the box first, then type.
Callout Q
Words in one place, pointing at something in another. Click where the
words should go, type them, then drag the arrow onto what they are about.
There is no box round the text — use a Text box if you want one.
Note N
A pin with a remark attached. Use it when the drawing is already busy and
another sentence printed across it would make things worse — the pin
sits quietly and opens when someone wants it.
Numbered bubble B
Each click drops the next number in sequence — punch items, RFIs,
detail references, keynotes. Set the prefix and the next number in
Properties, so you can start at RFI-14 rather than 1.
Image I
Put a photograph or a screenshot on the sheet — a site photo of the
condition you are asking about, a detail lifted out of the spec. Size it
by its corners and turn it by the grip above it. You can also paste a
screenshot straight in, or drag a picture file onto the sheet.
A detail from another sheet, dropped on and sized by its corners.
Snapshot Shift+S
Drag a box round part of the sheet and it becomes a picture — place
it on another sheet, or paste it straight into an email. It captures what
would print, markups and all, so a snapshot of your takeoff shows the
takeoff.
Appearance — color, weight, fill
Color, line weight and fill pattern for whatever you draw next, in the
toolbar. Change them with something selected and you change that instead.
Stamps
The ones a set actually needs — Approved, Reviewed, As Built, and
the rest — placed with a click. Every stamp in Rollset is text
rather than a picture, so it stays sharp at any zoom and prints clean.
Organizing a takeoff
Measuring is the easy half. This is the half that decides whether the
numbers mean anything when you come to price them.
Subject — what you are measuring
The box in the toolbar that says what the next markup is:
"Building slab", "6in CMU", "Doors". Everything sharing a subject totals
together, and each subject becomes one row in the Takeoff List.
Set it before you measure and the takeoff organizes itself as you
go. New item starts a fresh one. Getting into this habit is worth
more than any single tool on this page.
Takeoff List
Every measurement on the job, grouped by subject, totaled, with the sheet
each one came from. Click a row and it takes you to the markup. It is the
thing you check before you send a price.
Columns and pricing
Add your own columns to the Takeoff List — a unit rate, a waste
factor, a supplier, a note, a date, a tick box — and let it do the
arithmetic. A formula column can multiply the measured quantity by a rate,
so the takeoff comes out priced rather than exported and rebuilt in a
spreadsheet.
It is still your spreadsheet's job to be the estimate. The point of doing
it here is that the number and the drawing it came from stay attached to
each other.
Named Quantities
Give a total a name, and that name is what a spreadsheet points at. When
the drawing changes and you remeasure, the name still means the same
thing, so the estimate updates instead of breaking.
This is the difference between a takeoff you can revise and a takeoff you
redo. Name the quantities that matter — the ones a revision will
move — rather than all of them.
Space
Draw round a room, a floor, a bay or a unit and give it a name. From then
on every markup inside it is counted under that name as well as its own
subject — so a takeoff breaks down by room without you measuring
anything twice.
Draw the spaces first, once, then take off normally. Nothing you do
afterwards has to know about them.
A space named on the sample floor plan.
Layers
Keep trades apart. Put the electrical takeoff on one layer and the
concrete on another, then show one at a time when the sheet gets crowded,
or when you are sending the marked-up set to one sub and not the other.
Properties
Everything about whatever is selected: color, line weight, fill, the
measurement settings, depth, multiplier, the subject, the status. Select
several markups and change them all at once.
Status, and the right-click menu
Right-click anything you have drawn. Cut, copy, delete; Multiply
for regular copies; Put on all sheets for something that belongs on
every one; Lock so you stop nudging it. Then Set status
(Accepted, Rejected, Completed, In Progress, or your own),
Layer, and Arrange for front-and-back and lining up.
Save to Tool Library keeps the thing you just set up.
Use for new markups makes its settings the default. Comment…
adds a remark to it.
Getting around a set
Select V
Click a markup to pick it up. Handles to resize, the grip above to turn it.
Lasso select F
Draw round several markups at once when a box would catch things you do not want.
Pan G
Or hold Space in any tool, or drag with the middle mouse button — which is what you will actually do.
Zoom to area Z
Drag a box and it fills the window. Faster than scrolling in when you know
where you are going.
The whole sheet.After dragging a box round the equipment pad.
Sheets and thumbnails
Every sheet in the set down the left, by number and title. Flag the ones
you are working on and filter to just those. Rotate, delete and reorder
from the same panel.
Tabs
One tab per set. Keep the architectural set, the structural set and last
year's job open side by side. The + opens another PDF, starts a
blank document, or reopens a job you already have.
Search
Find a sheet, or any text on any sheet in the set — a room name, a
detail number, a spec section. Results say which sheet, and clicking one
takes you there.
Split view
Two sheets side by side in one window — the plan and the schedule,
the floor plan and the reflected ceiling, this revision and the last one.
Each side scrolls and zooms on its own.
Compare revisions
Hold one issue of a sheet against another and let Rollset find what moved.
Pick the sheet to compare against, choose a color for the other issue's
lines, and it can cloud the differences for you.
This is the one that pays for itself on a rebid. Nobody finds every change
by eye, and the ones you miss are the ones that cost money.
Status bar and running totals
Along the bottom: zoom, the sheet you are on, the light and dark themes,
and the running totals — length, area and count for whatever you are
measuring right now. Not the whole job; the number that tells you whether
the last twenty minutes went the right way.
Grid and snapping
At the right-hand end of the status bar. Grid draws a grid at the
spacing in the box beside it — in real-world units once the sheet has
a scale, so a 1′ grid is a foot on the ground. Then three snaps:
Grid makes every point land on it, Content makes points land
on the drawing's own lines and corners, and Markup makes them land
on something you already drew.
All of it is off until you turn it on, including on a new blank sheet. A
constraint you did not ask for quietly moves every point you place, which
is worse than no help at all.
Saving, and getting the numbers out
Jobs
A job is a set plus its takeoff, kept on your own computer. Open the Jobs
dialog to reopen one, or to see what is taking up room. Nothing goes to a
server unless you switch on cloud backup, which is off until you do.
Save PDF
Three different things, and the difference matters:
Live keeps the takeoff. The markups print, and a clean copy of the data rides inside the file — subjects, columns, scales. Reopen it here and everything is still editable.
Flattened prints the markups and nothing else. Nobody downstream can pull your quantities, columns or costs back out. This is the one to send out of the office.
Sheets only is the drawings as they came, with no markup at all.
Send Flattened to anyone you are bidding against or bidding to.
Keep Live for yourself and your own estimator.
Summary report
One page: every subject, its total, and which sheets it came from. Good
enough to staple to a bid, and it is generated from the same numbers the
Takeoff List shows, so the two cannot disagree.
A summary of the sample set's takeoff — the same figures as the published answer key.
Legend
A key on the sheet showing what each color and subject means, so a
marked-up set makes sense to someone who was not there when you did it.
Toggle it on and off; it prints if it is on.
Spreadsheet export
The Takeoff List goes out as a spreadsheet with the columns you set up,
including any you added yourself. Quantity, unit, subject, sheet, and your
rates and formulas alongside them.
Set it up once, use it every job
Tool Library
Save a tool exactly as you have it — "6in CMU", "8ft fence",
"bollard" — with its color, line weight, fill and measurement
settings, and arm it again with a number key. 1 to 9
take the first nine.
A tool set can be exported as a file and sent to your other estimator, so
two people measuring the same job produce takeoffs that add up together
instead of ones that have to be reconciled.
Symbols
The symbols a count actually needs — receptacles, fixtures,
diffusers, sprinklers — so a count mark looks like the thing it is
counting. Every one is drawn from geometry rather than being a picture, so
it stays crisp however far you zoom in.
Multiply
Copies of something on a regular pitch: joists, stalls, piers, light
fittings, fence posts. Say how many across and down and at what spacing,
in feet and inches, and it lays them out. The original stays where it is
and takes the first cell.
Every copy is a markup like any other, so they all count and all total.
Draw to size
A shape from its dimensions instead of from a trace — type 36′
by 24′-6″ and it draws it. For something that is not on the
drawing at all, or as a check against something that is.
Leave Measure it ticked and it counts in the takeoff like anything
you traced.
New document, new sheet
Blank paper at a real paper size — Letter, Legal, Tabloid, ARCH C, D
or E — portrait or landscape, one page or several. For a sketch, a
detail you are working out, or a cover sheet.
The grid stays off unless you turn it on, and the spacing is preloaded at
a quarter inch so one click in the status bar gives you drafting paper.
OCR for scanned sets
A scanned drawing is a photograph as far as a computer is concerned: no
text to search, no sheet numbers to read. Run OCR over the set and Rollset
reads the words, so search works, sheet numbers come through, and the
thumbnails carry titles instead of "Page 4".
It runs on your own machine, sheet by sheet, and you can keep working
while it goes.
Measuring a scan is exactly as accurate as the scan is. Set the scale from
that sheet's own graphic bar, never from another sheet, because a scanner
that stretched the page by two percent will hand you a two percent
error on every number.
Comment
A remark attached to a particular markup, rather than written on the
drawing. Right-click something and choose Comment…. Use it for the
reasoning — why this area excludes the mechanical room — that
you will want in three weeks and nobody else needs on the print.
Check it against known numbers
Every picture on this page was taken on the sample set, and the sample set
comes with its answers published. Download it, measure it, and see whether
Rollset agrees — it takes about five minutes and it is a fairer test
of a takeoff tool than any feature list.
