Active Takeoff

AT is a quick and efficient way to take info out of plans and other images, and best of all to document the source of the take off information. The PDF reports created by AT make it easy to document and share the take off process with others. Really cool program.

Vorteile

Easy to learn, and does A LOT for the cost and time it takes to start using

Nachteile

I really want an Excel output report in simple spreadsheet format. Example of what I want:

Plan Sheet Color Data 1 Sf Volume
Floorplan Red Building Material One 100 600
Floorplan Blue Building Material One 200 800
Elevations Yellow Building Material One 250 900
Elevations Blue Building Material One 50 180

Shown below is the way Active T reports look now. I have to manually create new columns in Excel to show Color and Plan Sheet info IN EACH ROW. So I can sort my report by the heading of ANY COLUMN at will.

FLOORPLAN
Color Red
Building Material One 100 600
Color Blue
Building Material One 200 800

ELEVATIONS
Color Yellow
Building Material One 250 900
Color Blue
Building Material One 50 180

This is just one example of the current reports using extraneous rows to deliver information. Please give me one reporting option that has NO rows containing anything that is not pure data, with the sole exception of the headings to each column, which should be located in the first row. Things that are now titles to separate sections in the report should be converted to a column, and the title should be reported on each row. Like the Plan Sheet and Color info is showing in my example report. Please and Thank You!

Good experience so far. I did have to call once to learn a bit more about some updated features. I was pleased to find that help was readily available and they where willing to train me on some new items over the phone. However, it is a Canadian based company and the lovely man that was assisting me (I believe one of the founders actually) is French Canadian and it was terribly hard to understand him over the phone. he was so nice and willing to help teach me how to use the product correctly. Even with him taking control of the computer to show how to do everything though, the language barrier made retaining the info difficult. Other than that, I love the product despite needing to grow a bit. Even though I do not use all of its features, its lower price and time saving's make it worth it for me.

Vorteile

Very affordable compared to similar software. I love that is allows me to color code plans. As a GC, the subcontractors love it when I have a color coded plan for them. This program eliminates my frantic searching for take-off calculation pages and makes it easier to pick up where I left off when changes are made. No more adding strings upon strings of dimensions! Plans allways say "Do not scale" when given to us to Bid, not sure how they expect us to price accurately when that is the case, but the scale configuration is perfect when you are not given an actual scale and still just need to get the job done.

Nachteile

As a software, It is getting there. there are still some kinks, and usability is not the greatest. It is not a software for someone who is computer illiterate. The estimating and take-offs in particular could use some tweaking. I never use it to generate full estimates because it is missing a lot of what would be needed for a G.C. (Perhaps for an individual trade would be more beneficial). What my money goes into it for is the quantity take-offs. the setting materials is a bit cumbersome and confusing but you can make it work, albeit sometimes incorrectly. But hey, there are many ways to skin a cat!