Stress Less, Win More Bids, and Get Your Weekends Back!
When it comes to construction estimating, speed and accuracy is crucial to winning more work. Time spent fixing mistakes or doing things by hand is time you’re not spending on the next bid. That’s why we’re excited to share this update with you to make your estimating faster, easier, and more accurate than ever before.
With On-Screen Takeoff 4.0, you get smarter tools to help handle the time-consuming, repetitive tasks. That means you’ll finish takeoffs in less time, make fewer errors, and submit stronger bids.
Key Highlights
On-Screen Takeoff 4.0 accelerates your estimating with smarter automation:
- Improvements to Takeoff Boost™ including:
- For Wall and Ceiling Contractors, Takeoff Boost now identifies ACT and gypsum board ceilings
- Painting contractors - Takeoff Boost now takes off both sides of interior walls
- Takeoff Boost now detects unlabeled Windows
- Takeoff Boost now uses native PDFs for greater accuracy
- Takeoff Boost sets Default Condition Results for Wall and Paint takeoff
- Workflow Improvement that benefit all On-Screen Takeoff users:
- A more intuitive method of reassigning takeoff from one Condition to another using the Context Menu (right-click menu)
- Increased the number of characters in Condition Names from 75 to 255
These changes mean less manual cleanup, faster turnarounds, and more winning bids—giving you the competitive edge you need in today's market.
Upgrading from On-Screen Takeoff 3?
- Before you upgrade:
- Return your license
- Upgrade On-Screen Takeoff to v.4
- Open OST and Activate your License Key or Server Code again to update your product license (see Related Articles)
- Your Access database will be upgraded to support v.4 automatically
- If you are using an SQL database in a shared-access environment, do not install any updates until your IT department tells you to do so.
Please see previous Release Notes History (at the bottom of this article) for more recently added Features and Improvements.
Let’s look at how this version helps you crush your competition.
New Features
Takeoff Boost Enhancements
See On-Screen Takeoff - 06.02.01 - Takeoff Boost - Overview and Requirements for details on using Takeoff Boost.
- Takeoff Boost now identifies gypsum board (GWB) and Acoustical Ceiling Tile (ACT) ceilings.
- Optionally, if your ceilings are tagged with a ceiling type, like the example below, a separate Condition for each type is created and takeoff drawn with it.
- Takeoff Boost now supports Painting contractors by taking off both sides of interior walls. Use the improved re-assign workflow (below) to make quick work of assigning this takeoff to appropriate Paint Conditions you create.
We are putting the finishing touches on the Painting update, it should be available Nov 14 - it will not require another update to OST, it is all in the Takeoff Boost cloud service.
- Takeoff Boost now identifies Windows even if they are not labeled by using the openings in exterior walls.
- Updated Default Condition Results for Takeoff Boost Conditions, based on user feedback:
- When Takeoff Boost creates “Wall” Condition(s), it selects LF, SF, and Segment Count as the default results.
- When Takeoff Boost creates “Wall Surface Area” (Paint) Condition(s), it selects SF, LF, and Segment Count as the default results (even though it is a Linear Condition and Linear takeoff, painting contractors are most interested in SF).
- Takeoff Boost now supports processing native PDFs, instead of converting them to lower resolution files, for greater accuracy!
- If you converted PDFs to TIFFs using On-Screen Takeoff, Takeoff Boost locates the original PDFs and uploads them, if they are still accessible.
| Before OST 4.0 (PDFs converted to jpeg files) | After (Native PDFs uploaded to Takeoff Boost) |
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| Previously On-Screen Takeoff converted PDF files to jpeg before uploading to Takeoff Boost. When the results came back, the blue segment was not split into two Wall Types, as it should have been. This required manual adjustment of takeoff and possibly creating another Condition. | After this update, On-Screen Takeoff uploads native PDFs at higher resolutions to the Takeoff Boost Service for processing. As you can see, the segment is taken off correctly using two Conditions. |
On-Screen Takeoff 4.0 includes an updated Sample Projects database with an updated Takeoff Boost project that showcases the changes above. If you are upgrading from a previous version of OST, your database will not be overwritten, but you can get that updated project here:
On-Screen Takeoff - Getting Started with Features Bid Packages
Changes
Workflow Improvements
- Condition Names can now contain up to 255 alpha-numeric characters, up from 75 - this matches Quick Bid’s Condition Name field.
- It’s easier than ever to Reassign Takeoff from one Condition to another! Just right-click on one or more selected takeoff objects and choose the Condition to which you want to move it:
See: Reassigning Takeoff from One Condition to Another Existing Condition for more information
Known Issues
New in this version
Carried over from previous versions
- Removing annotations in the Image window when the Annotation and View window and View window are open does not update properly (Ref# ART3-4308)
- If you CUT and paste takeoff from one Page to another, the blue "takeoff" indicator does not get updated in the Page Navigator until you leave the Image Tab and return (Case 02230614, (Ref# TE-4400 (replaces ART3-4400 and ON-4728)))
- (Ref# ART3-4400/ON-4728 was fixed in 3.98.14, however it was determined that fix caused unforeseen issues with the Page Navigator so that fix has been reverted in later versions)
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