AI takeoff software, compared

The incumbent answer, and the tool most people reading this already own. Revu has found and counted repeated symbols since long before any of this was called AI: Visual Search takes an instance of a symbol you select and finds the rest, and Apply Count Measurement to Checked turns those results into count markups. Bluebeam notes you may need to lower the sensitivity on a PDF made from a scan, because of stray pixels and background noise.

Bluebeam Max is the newer part, and it is worth being precise about what it covers, because this is the question an estimator on Revu is really asking. It connects an AI model to Revu through the Bluebeam MCP server, on Revu 21.9 and later, and Bluebeam publishes the function list. Grouped, it covers document information, markup management, state and workflow, search, colour, Studio, document editing and custom columns. The Measurements group contains one function, set_page_scale.

So a model connected this way reads the document, searches its text, sets the page scale, and adds, edits and deletes markups. Quantity takeoff does not appear in the published list.

The most specific documentation of the lot, and the most useful for working out whether it fits your scope. You set the drawing scale, press the Togal button, and processing takes ten to fifteen seconds depending on drawing size. What comes back is grouped three ways: areas as footprint, net area, gross area and doors area; lines as wall centreline, wall perimeter and doors centreline; counts as doors, plumbing fixtures, furniture and appliances.

Their own best-practice note is the honest part, and it is the sort of thing worth reading before you buy anything on this page: treat the result as a starting point, then reclassify and edit where needed.

Worth knowing where the button stops. For elevation views, Togal’s documentation points you at the manual tools rather than the automated run: trace area polygons and use the Cut tool to remove window areas. If your scope lives on elevations, that is the workflow you are buying.

Their own summary is a fair one: a cloud-based AI takeoff and estimating platform where you upload drawings, measure with AI-powered and manual tools, build estimates and generate reports, from any browser on Windows or Mac. Auto Measure automatically detects and measures rooms, walls, doors, windows and custom areas. One-Click Area lets you click inside a shape and have the AI detect the boundary, with positive and negative points to refine it. Scale recognition is automatic.

Two things are worth pulling out for anyone comparing on how a tool is driven. Caddie AI is the conversational part: you ask questions about specifications, dimensions, materials or schedules and it keeps context across sheets. And Kreo states that it reads native PDF and CAD vector data rather than rasterised images, so measurements are accurate to the original file. If your sets arrive as scans, that is the sentence to ask them about.

A cloud takeoff and estimating platform, and the one that puts the most weight on picking the right measurement type up front, because the type is what decides the unit that comes out. There are nine. Area, Linear and Count are the three everyone expects. The other six are the reason to look properly: Surface Area for painted walls, wallpaper and drywall, Pitched Area and Pitched Linear for a sloped roof measured from an aerial view, Linear with Drop for wire that drops down to an outlet, and Volume 2D and Volume 3D for cubic yardage on a slab, a parking lot, a footing or a wall.

Most types hand back a secondary measurement as well as the primary one, which is the part that saves a second pass. An Area takeoff returns the square footage and the linear footage of its perimeter. A Volume 3D takeoff returns cubic yardage, square footage and perimeter. Every type also returns an Each count.

Part of Autodesk Construction Cloud, and the one on this list that is not only a 2D tool. You can take off from 2D sheets and from 3D models in the same project. Autodesk is firm about the prerequisite, and words it plainly: before you can perform takeoff on a sheet, you must specify its scale. Either pick one from the toolbar or calibrate against a known distance, and on a vector PDF you have to snap to two points while you do it.

On a sheet the tools are Area, Linear and Count, with Combine and Cutout for tidying overlapping areas. Sitting under the Count tool is Symbol Detection, which automatically locates all symbols on a 2D sheet that resemble a symbol you specify. That is the same job Revu does with Visual Search, in a different product.

The model side is a different job from measuring a PDF, and it is where this one pulls away from the rest of the list: the quantity comes off the objects themselves rather than off a drawing of them.