Kanopi Takeoff
Every quantity, measured twice.
Send a plan set. Kanopi counts and measures everything on it, every trade, then measures it again without looking at the first answer. The quantities come back in your own spreadsheet.
In plain words: feet of wall, number of doors, square feet of tile and roof. The second count is how we catch what one count misses, before your price depends on it.
Kanopi Takeoff in about 90 seconds. No sound needed: the captions are on screen.
How we do it
How a Kanopi takeoff is made.
- 01
Read the whole set
Every sheet is opened, named and sorted first, so nothing is measured off the wrong page. When a new revision arrives, we see exactly what changed.
For the estimatorClose
Sheet ingest renders each sheet, reads the sheet number and title, and tells vector from raster. The sheet map comes from the set itself, not from notes: on one job the schedules sat on a different sheet than the index said. Revisions are diffed by pixels, text and path count per sheet.
- 02
Measure the drawing's own lines
On a CAD set we measure the lines the architect drew, not a picture of them. That is the difference between counting and guessing.
For the estimatorClose
Vector paths come straight out of the PDF. If the architect's CAD layers survive in the file, they are read first; otherwise each line style is keyed to the legend. Walls come from stroked runs, door leaves from swing arcs, masonry from hatch bands, and scale is checked between two grid lines.
- 03
Read what a person would read
Dimensions, door tags and schedules are read off the sheet the way an estimator reads them, then checked against the geometry.
For the estimatorClose
Many CAD sets plot their text as outlines, so dimensions, tags and schedules are read by a vision model from close crops at 150 to 200 dpi. Heights come from the elevations; hardware sets from the specs; area detections are checked against the room sums.
- 04
Draw it over the plan
Every measured line is drawn back over the sheet in color, and a person looks at it before any number is trusted.
For the estimatorClose
A quantity without an overlay is not a takeoff. The overlay is where a missed wing or a double-counted match line shows up.
- 05
Measure it again, blind
A second, independent measurement that never sees the first is run on every takeoff. Where the two disagree, we find out why before anything ships.
For the estimatorClose
The blind pass is a separate agent on the same PDF with no access to the first pass. Contradictions are logged sheet by sheet and reconciled; outbound is held until they are.
- 06
Deliver in your format
Quantities come back in your own estimating spreadsheet in 24 to 48 hours, with the tolerance stated on the face of the takeoff.
For the estimatorClose
The deliverable is the quantity file, the overlays and the reconciliation log. The same quantity file feeds Kanopi Bid directly when you want it priced.
The tools
What we use, what we read, what we hand back.
The skills are an estimator's: read the set, measure, check, reconcile. The tools make every step repeatable and visible.
- PyMuPDF
- Pulls the vector paths and any CAD layers straight out of the PDF, so walls and doors are measured from geometry.
- Vision model on crops
- Reads dimensions, tags and schedules where the text is plotted as outlines.
- Sheet ingest and revision diff
- Our own: maps every sheet, and shows what changed between two issues of a set.
- Overlay renderer
- Our own: draws every measured line back over the sheet for a person to inspect.
- Blind second pass
- Our own: an independent measurement that never sees the first, reconciled before release.
- What we reference
- The drawing geometry, the legends, the door, window and finish schedules, the elevations for heights, and the specs for hardware sets.
- What you get
- A quantity file in your spreadsheet, the overlays, and the log of what the second pass caught.
How accurate
What measured twice has caught.
These are the figures we can show our work for. Each says how it was measured, so you can judge it.
- On a 36,153 SF youth campus, two independent measurements of the interior partitions agreed within 2.4 percent.
- The same measurement showed the earlier desktop estimate had carried about five times the real wall length: 1,834 linear feet measured, against 9,470 guessed from a density rule.
- The blind pass there caught a low wing zoned at the wrong height and a ceiling area over-read until the grid was excluded.
- In our 11-bid blind study: building area on a 121-unit hotel within 1 percent, 122 individual quantities exact, window count within 4 percent, wall systems within about 2 percent. No miss traced to a quantity.
How measured: the 2.4 percent compares two passes on the same PDF, not a survey of the built work. The blind study compares Kanopi's quantities against the bids we actually shipped, priced from the original intake set without seeing the answer. n=11, our own history. We do not publish a universal accuracy percentage.
Next to other tools
Good takeoff software exists, and many estimators should keep it. The difference is who does the measuring and who checks it.
- Togal.AI, STACK, PlanSwift, Kreo, Handoff
- Software your estimator runs. Several now draft an AI first pass; your estimator checks it, clicks the rest and owns the result. Kanopi does the measuring and a person checks it before it reaches you.
- Bluebeam
- The PDF markup and measuring tool on most estimators' laptops. Keep it. We work from the same PDFs, and your team can mark up our overlays in it.
- Their published terms
- The vendor terms we checked provide the software as is and place verification on the customer.
- A blind second measurement
- None of the tools we checked offer an independent second measurement that never sees the first. Kanopi runs one on every takeoff.
Checked against vendor pages and published terms in July 2026, and vendor pages again in October 2026. No competitor prices are shown.
Send one plan set and judge the quantities against your own.
Send us a plan set