Gain a comprehensive understanding of the measurement tools within Bluebeam, a key software for construction estimators. This article delves into the various tools available for creating quantity takeoffs, setting scales, and utilizing features like the dynamic fill tool for area takeoffs.
Key Insights
- Bluebeam offers a range of measurement tools for construction estimators, including length, polylength, area, perimeter, diameter, radius, angles, volumes, and count tools. Each tool is designed for specific tasks, such as measuring between two points (length tool) or counting items like light fixtures (count tool).
- Setting the correct scale is crucial in Bluebeam. Estimators can set the scale for all pages in the set at once, a current page, a selected page, or a custom range. They can choose from preset scales or create custom scales based on known dimensions on the plans.
- Bluebeam's dynamic fill tool is a powerful feature that allows estimators to produce area takeoffs quickly. By setting a border, users can simply click their mouse inside of the border, and the dynamic fill will automatically fill up the area with a takeoff, stopping itself at the borders of the set-up.
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Now that we have talked through a lot of the different drop-down menus, the different tools within Bluebeam, as well as the ability to organize them within toolbars, now we can start to focus on our measurement tools and really move into the takeoff and estimating process. So while we reviewed the majority of the tools before, we skipped over the tools that we're going to be spending the most of our time in today so that we can focus on them a little bit more in depth and actually start to try these all out right now before we then jump into the plans and actually start to create our quantity takeoff. So the way that we do our quantity takeoffs in Bluebeam are all by way of this measurement area, and in that measurement area there is going to be various different tools that we can use to accurately take off the measurements on the plans.
So first we have to set our scale, which we will jump into shortly, but just to highlight which tools we have. Length tool, that's just going to be measuring in between two areas. Polylength is going to be measuring the length but allowing you to do more than just a point A to point B length.
It could be point A to point B to point C, however many points you need. It's more of a continuous linear measurement as opposed to length which is just one point to another point. An area is going to be pretty straightforward, trying to measure like the square footage or something of an area.
Perimeter, same thing, just going to be measuring the linear of a certain perimeter. We've got diameter, we've got radius, we've also got a three-point radius, as well as things like angles and volumes. These are all going to be the basic measurements that we can produce out of lupian.
Jumping down a little further, there's going to be some really helpful cutout tools. So for example, if we have a large rectangular area that we need to do a take off of, but maybe there's an inlay of a different material or an inlay that's like a window and we need to almost do a negative count or decrease the amount of our take off, we can use these cutout tools to do that and we'll certainly show that and explain that more as we move forward. Next up is going to be our count tool and that's going to be for simple counting up of things like plumbing fixtures, light fixtures, those kind of items.
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Lastly, we have our dynamic fill tool which we will certainly explore. This is a really cool feature of Bluebeam that allows you to produce area takeoffs really, really quickly. So instead of you having to click around to all the different corners of the area that you want to measure, you would simply set a border in this dynamic fill tool and you would just click your mouse inside of that border and the dynamic fill will automatically fill up that area with a takeoff and it will be able to stop itself at the borders of whatever you've set up for it.
So that one's a little bit difficult to explain without showing on the screen but we certainly will get to that shortly. But these are all the different measurement types that we can do within Bluebeam. So the first thing that we would do as estimators when we want to start doing some takeoffs is setting the scale of our plan set.
We would click on set the scale and what we can do here is we can set the scale in a couple of different ways. We can do it on all pages in the set at once, we can do it on a current page, we can do it on just the page that is selected, or we could do it on a custom range. So whatever makes sense here if you have different scales and you can only do it on certain ranges at a time or if the whole set is the same scale you could do it in bulk.
Jumping down we have options for a preset scale or a custom scale. So a lot of plans that we will likely run into when we're estimating they will have preset scales because they will have been designed to something pretty conventional. So you can see a lot of the preset scales that we have in here 1 16th of an inch to a foot, 1 8th of an inch to a foot, 1 quarter 3 16ths, as well as some more maybe like heavy civil type scales here.
You may see some of these in more horizontal projects. So you do have some presets but you could also do custom scales and you could calibrate that scale as well. If there is let's say a known dimension on the plans but you don't know what the actual scale is you would be able to measure that known dimension on the plans and actually help to calibrate a scale based on it.
Luckily for today we're only going to be working off of preset scales so that's going to be pretty simple. There is also an option sometimes to have a different y scale than X scale. Now these plans today do not have that but if you do run into any plans or details that do have a separate X and a separate y scale that functionality does exist in the system.
And there is also this concept of precision that we can add in as well which we will see as we start to apply a scale here. So that is our orientation of how to do this and now let's actually do it for some plans. We'll go down to maybe this plan 5 over in our thumbnails here and again just a quick note on navigation.
Right now I'm using the wheel on my mouse to zoom in and out. If I click control and then I hit that wheel that's going to allow me to scroll through plans. So sometimes I use a combination of just the wheel itself and then I will press control and then I'll be able to scroll up and down through plans.
So that combination of using the mouse scroll and using control is probably the easiest way that I've found to navigate through plans quickly in Bluebeam. So this plan itself we can see that it has a scale of one-eighth of an inch to one foot and the plan next to it in the set it has a scale of three-sixteenth of an inch to one foot. We can't really do a bulk right now because we've got two different scales here.
So let's just do one at a time for this plan. So a couple of different options here we could go back to that set the scale drop down or we could even just right click on the thumbnail and you can see that there's a lot of options right there and when you right click on that thumbnail the second option in the drop down is to set the scale. So that's an easy way to do this.
We'll hit set scale and the page that's selected is just number five which is all we're looking to do right now. We're going to go ahead and grab a one-eighth inch to one foot scale and we can see that there's a precision factor as well which is kind of you know how much leeway if there is going to be any sort of granularity to the values that we're taking off here. We're going to hit apply scale and you can see to confirm underneath this plan underneath sheet number five in the set we can see that the scale has been set to one-eighth of an inch equals one foot.
Now just to test this out let's go up into our toolbar into measure and let's just grab a length and we can see that there is a known dimension on this plan this says it's 91 feet 7 inches. So to do this takeoff we would just go click on the extent of this line drag our mouse over and then single click on the end and right then and there we have done a takeoff in Bluebeam and we've done a linear takeoff and if we want to move where that text number shows up we can just grab that middle yellow piece and move it up but right then and there is the first takeoff that we've done on Bluebeam and we can see that we set the scale correctly and what we measured is accurate and it matches what is shown on the plans in the design.
