The problem: concrete is bought by the yard and drawn by the foot
- A slab is drawn in square feet but ordered in cubic yards, and the conversion changes with every thickness on the plan.
- One building can carry a 4in house slab, a 6in garage slab, a thickened edge and a separate footing pour — four different depths inside one outline.
- Footings, curbs, and edge forms are linear, and they follow the same perimeter you just traced for area.
- Short-loading a truck costs money and so does sending one back. The number has to be right before it is called in.
Doing this in a spreadsheet means re-keying every area by hand, and re-keying it again when the architect moves a wall. The arithmetic is not hard — keeping it in step with a revised drawing is.
How the tool handles it
Each area condition carries its own thickness, so cubic yards come straight out of the trace: area times depth in inches divided by 324 — the conversion that folds in both inches-to-feet and cubic-feet-to-yards — plus your waste percentage, rounded up to the quarter yard if that is how you order. Trace a 6in garage pad and a 4in house slab as two conditions on the same sheet and each converts on its own terms.
One trace, the whole material list
A condition is a named, colored layer you trace on the drawing. An assembly turns that one condition into every part it drives, each with its own formula, coverage rate, waste percentage and rounding rule. A 4in slab on grade condition looks like this:
| Part | Unit | Driven by |
|---|---|---|
| Ready-mix concrete | CY | slab SF × thickness in inches ÷ 324, + 8% waste, rounded up |
| Aggregate base | TON | slab SF × base depth × density ÷ 2000 |
| Vapor barrier | SF | slab SF + 10% for laps |
| Welded wire mesh | SF | slab SF + 10% overlap |
| Rebar | LF | slab SF ÷ grid spacing × 2 directions, + lap allowance |
| Rebar chairs / dobies | EA | rebar LF ÷ 5ft spacing |
| Edge form | LF | slab perimeter |
| Form stakes | EA | form LF ÷ 2ft spacing |
| Isolation joint filler | LF | abutting wall and column LF |
| Control joint saw cut | LF | from the joint layout trace |
| Curing compound | GAL | slab SF ÷ coverage |
| Place and finish labor | HR | slab SF ÷ crew production rate |
Change a coverage rate, a waste percentage or a unit cost and every job using that assembly re-prices. You are not editing numbers in twelve places.
Thickness per condition
A 4in slab, a 6in drive and a 12in thickened edge are three conditions on one sheet, each converting square feet to yards at its own depth.
Perimeter reuse
The outline you trace for slab area also gives you edge form linear feet and the stake count, so the perimeter is measured once and used twice.
Deductions
Interior footings, pits, pads and blockouts subtract from the parent slab instead of being eyeballed off the total.
Every number traces back to a mark
When the yardage is questioned — and on a short load it will be — you show the slab traced with its thickness labeled, the deductions marked, and the waste factor stated. The number stops being an opinion.
Every number on the report links back to a specific mark, on a specific sheet, at a specific place on the page. The marked-up PDF export draws every mark in its condition color with the quantity labeled — that is the file you attach to the bid.
Accuracy is held to a stated tolerance: linear measurements within 0.10% of true, straight-sided areas within 0.25%, and calibration repeatable within 0.20% across five separate calibrations of the same page. Geometry is stored in PDF units, never screen pixels, and rounding happens exactly once — at report time.
What it costs
One short-loaded truck, one returned load, or one slab figured at the wrong thickness costs more than this tool does.
$2,500, paid once. Nothing in year two. Nothing in year three. No per-seat bill and no renewal date.
| Estimators using it | A per-seat subscription, five years | Ours, one-time licence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $8,745 – $10,000 | $2,500 |
| 2 | $17,490 – $20,000 | $2,500 |
| 3 | $26,235 – $30,000 | $2,500 |
| 5 | $43,725 – $50,000 | $2,500 |
Their column multiplies by headcount and then repeats every year. Ours does neither. Put a fourth estimator on it and the number is still $2,500, because you are not licensing seats — you are buying the software.
And it does not repeat
| Whole company | Per-seat subscription, billed that year | Ours, billed that year |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $1,749 – $2,000 × seats | $2,500 |
| Year 2 | $1,749 – $2,000 × seats | $0 |
| Year 3 | $1,749 – $2,000 × seats | $0 |
| Year 4 | $1,749 – $2,000 × seats | $0 |
| Year 5 | $1,749 – $2,000 × seats | $0 |
What you actually receive
- The source code. Not access to it — a copy of it, running on your infrastructure.
- A one-time perpetual licence. It does not expire, it cannot be revoked, and there is no renewal date in your calendar.
- No seat count. Put every estimator in the company on it. There is no user tier to outgrow and nothing that counts logins.
- No dependence on us. Sixty days of support are included. After that you can hire any developer to change it, because you have the code. Most vendors cannot make that offer, because with them you are renting.
Subscription figures are publicly reported PlanSwift prices from software review sites, shown as a representative example of per-seat takeoff pricing. Check any vendor's current pricing directly before you compare. See the full PlanSwift comparison.
What is being built next
- DXF and DWG import is in active development. Today the tool reads PDF. If your drawings arrive as CAD files, ask on the call and we will give you honest timing rather than a guess on a web page.
- Auto-count symbol recognition — box a symbol once and find every match on the sheet — is a later release.
- Multi-estimator assignment, so a supervisor can hand work to specific people, is still being built out.