The problem: a foundation wall is never one height
- Footings step on a sloped lot, so the wall changes height every few courses.
- A walkout or daylight basement drops one or two walls to almost nothing.
- A garage stem wall and a full basement wall sit on the same perimeter.
- Waterproofing stops at grade, not at the top of the wall — and grade moves as you walk around the building.
Every takeoff tool that asks for one wall height and multiplies is guessing. On a stepped or walkout foundation that guess is worth hundreds of square feet of membrane in either direction — coming out of your margin if you are low, out of the job if you are high.
How the tool handles it
A wall condition carries a default height, and every individual segment can override it with its own height and its own grade offset. The height shows as an editable badge at the midpoint of each segment. Square footage is computed segment by segment and added up, never as total linear feet times one average.
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 Below-grade wall membrane condition looks like this:
| Part | Unit | Driven by |
|---|---|---|
| Sheet membrane | SF | wall SF + 12% waste |
| Primer | GAL | wall SF ÷ spread rate, rounded up to the pail |
| Drainage board | SF | wall SF + 8% waste |
| Protection course | SF | wall SF below grade |
| Termination bar | LF | top-of-wall LF |
| Fasteners | EA | bar LF ÷ 12in spacing |
| Mastic at cold joint | GAL | cove LF ÷ coverage |
| Inside / outside corner detail | EA | derived from the traced polyline |
| Penetration detailing | EA | penetration count |
| Tie-hole patch and surface prep | SF | wall SF |
| Footing drain pipe | LF | footing LF |
| Filter fabric | SF | drain LF × wrap width |
| Drainage stone | TON | drain LF × trench section × density |
| Membrane install labor | HR | wall SF ÷ crew production rate |
| Detail and primer labor | HR | corner and penetration count ÷ 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.
Pinned dimensions
Measure the 8'-0 wall once on the section sheet, name it, and assign it by name to segments on the foundation plan. Change the pin and every segment using it updates.
Automatic corner counts
Corner detail is priced per each and is miserable to count by hand. The tool reads the interior angle at every vertex and reports inside and outside corners itself, with a tolerance band so a nearly straight vertex is not miscounted.
Lot instancing
Take off the builder's model once, then instance it per lot. Lot 14 is a walkout, lot 22 has a frost wall — each lot stores only its differences, and one report rolls the whole subdivision into a single material order.
Every number traces back to a mark
When a builder asks why the membrane number is what it is, you open the marked-up plan and show the foundation traced segment by segment, each one labeled with the height it was measured at and where grade cut it off. That is a different conversation than defending a lump sum.
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
Waterproofing is a margin trade. A bid built on an averaged wall height is a bid that is wrong in one direction or the other, and the cost of being wrong dwarfs the price of the tool.
$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.