On-Screen Takeoff

Easy to use

Excellent technical support

Flexible licensing

I would like to see an option for fully cloud-based. With most workers working from home, this is becoming critical.

Quantity Takeoff

Organization

Visual representation of project

User interface is dated

The functionality is intuitive to a point, but advanced features required digging and training.

Increases the speed of the estimating process

Allows us to break down the project into manageable pieces

It would be nice if you could select an object that occurs on multiple sheets, copy, and paste it into change orders or alternates.

If you could search for where a certain condition is being used (which sheet) and go directly to that page or pages, that would be cool.

Read Prints

On Screen Measuring to verify plans

Switching between different sheets of the plan set

It speeds up the bidding process of construction projects.

It simplifies our job as estimators and allows us to accurately compile large amounts of content as well as allowing us to navigate drawings easier.

Only one individual is allowed into a project at a given time.

As file sizes get larger the project will begin to slow down.

The biggest thing for me is that it is so easy to use, which allows it to be used widely throughout our organization without a lot of intense training.

Another great thing is that it does not matter how big or little the scope of the take off may be, it works just as well for a whole 12 story building take off as it does for a stretch of sidewalk.

I think it would be great if it could work on a file from a shared central location rather than from the local computer's files.

I would also like to see some more options for how I can export data to excel or other files for analysis and reporting.

Organization

Creating visuals for separation of spaces

User-friendliness

The software is a little out of date

Display of drawings could be improved tremendously

It would be nice if the software knew different steel shape weights to do a complete steel tonnage takeoff

Gathering quantities i.e. areas, counts, linear, etc.

Grouping these quantities as desired

Getting the quantities gathered in a timely fashion

How documents are uploaded to the program. On-Screen Takeoff will locate the files from whatever path you originally save it to. Therefore, if you move the location of the document, OST will not be able to open your project until the path is redirected.

Taking off curved shapes.

If you could apply a unit cost to a quantity, it would eliminate the need to export takeoff to Excel.

It would be nice to be able to apply a different scale to the same page i.e. if there are two different details on a drawing at two different scales, I have to duplicate the sheet and make sure I make each sheet scale to the specific detail on the sheet.

User-friendly and easy to learn. You can sit down and figure out how to do simple takeoffs and counts with minimal training.

It is very accurate and it is great that you can do several calculations for each condition you make.

The colors and shapes provide a great visible audit trail.

The layering feature helps from keeping the screen too busy if you are doing several conditions on one page.

The worksheet tab keeps tallies of all the takeoffs from each page nicely.

The backout mode feature can be a pain sometimes if you are trying to get real close to the edge of the takeoff you made and are trying to delete from.

If you create a project then move the file, you are screwed.

Takeoff

Calculating by area

Calculating by bid package

Using more than one of their sectioning tools at once. For instance, you must use a typical areas and zones to get areas within areas

Tutorials - On-Screen Takeoff has an amazing depth of features but their tutorial videos barely scrape the surface

Overlaying drawings help with finding changes

Take off multiple floors at the same time

Accurate and quick takeoffs

Not to sure if it can be improved.

Very easy to create conditions and to access that condition again and again throughout your project.

Navigating the drawings and controls are very easy to use.

Copying and pasting of takeoffs is very easy and a function that I use very frequently.

Make use of vector PDFs. Other software on the market makes use of these PDFs and makes it so that doing takeoffs is much more efficient. When you can snap to a line, or fill in a room, because the software can read where lines are, it makes it much more efficient.... and accurate.

Copying takeoffs from one project to another is cumbersome. Hopefully they can come up with a better way of doing this. Maybe being able to open two projects at once rather than closing one and opening another for each condition.

Ability to hyperlink drawings like BlueBeam does. This would be HUGE!!!

When I do a takeoff, such as a wall takeoff, I have to enter in the thickness and height of the wall. Because all of the information is already there, you should be able to click a button, or something similar, and have the view to turn to 3D. Then you would be able to go back a visualize in 3D what you just took off. The folks at OST have repeatedly turned away from working in 3D. This is the future and if OST doesn't catch up, they will get left behind. We are still years away from doing away with 2D takeoff, but it's something to consider. The function I have requested is just a matter of programming, the information is already being input by the user. It appears the OST programmers are just too stubborn or lazy to add a feature like this.

Being able to have multiple users access one project and update takeoff in real time. See other's takeoffs and be able to copy their takeoffs. Many trade takeoffs are taking off the same thing. For example, the drywall qty is often the same as the painting qty. The estimator doing a paint takeoff should be able to copy the drywall estimator's takeoff.

Ease of adaptability. Making new conditions for new items.

Links with custom built Excel files nicely.

Once conditions are deleted, there is no getting them back.

Not only does OST allow you to do square foot take-offs, but you can also set the areas taken off to include dimensional lines within the sq. ft. area, which is very helpful for our scope of work.

Setting slopes, to LF or SF, is very easily done without having to add factors for slope manually.

You're able to assign different areas within a single sheet of take-off.

If our SF items were to be able to be taken off with increments of x amount of feet (e.g. increments of 3'-0").

Able to have a way of keeping track of updated sets of take-offs without having to reassign areas after each set (e.g. floor areas_1-31-16, floor areas_3-31-16, floor areas_6-30-16).

I would like it if I our backup database would be simpler to find; however, I believe this is an internal issue rather than a software issue.

On-Screen saves automatically. It's great not to worry about when you last saved a document or potentially losing all your work if your computer crashes / freezes.

On-Screen allows you to create layers so that you can hide / show certain take offs. It's helpful when you're performing take-offs for multiple trades (drywall, electrical, lighting, flooring, etc) and have the ability to quickly turn the layers off and on.

On-Screen can export your take-offs to an excel file.

It would be nice if they added a functionality to jump to another page. For example, if you're working on a construction plan and it references a specific elevation or detail on another sheet, you can link to it from the construction plan and jump between sheets quickly. An alternative to that could also be adding a "recently viewed sheets" section so you can jump between pages quickly.

If On-Screen had OCR added, it could quickly rename all the sheets by looking at the title block.

Adding new sheets to a current bid can be improved. It isn't user friendly / easy to navigate to.