A snapshot of the takeoff — design identity and dimensions, headline summary, and every line with category, item, usage, qty, unit, note, consumed / purchased / waste footage, stock mix and per-unit length — stored as a document version tagged as the internal engine so no send path can mistake it for a SmartBuild job id.
Also called: internal estimate · estimate from the model · takeoff to estimate · our own estimate engine
The design becomes the estimate — you do not retype it
The takeoff is frozen into an estimate: the design's identity and dimensions, the headline summary, and every line with its category, item, usage, quantity, unit, note, footage, stock mix and per-unit length. It is priced off the same list the builder used, which is why the total in the builder and the total on the estimate are one number rather than two.
Every estimate is a frozen version, not a live recalculation
The estimate you sent in March still says what you sent in March, even after the design has moved on. Versions sit against each other with the difference between them shown line by line, which is what you need on the phone when a customer asks why the number went up.
What the customer reads is the same building
Dimensions, square footage, truss spacing and pitch, column spacing, steel gauges, overhangs, every opening, the slab, the attached porch — written out in the estimate the customer opens. The finishes picked in the builder show with their names rather than a colour code, and the hardware colours stay changeable right up until they approve.
Nine documents, filtered by who they are for
Elevations, footprint and a one-sheet for the client. Post layout, opening schedule, cross section and assembly notes for the crew. The material list for the shop. All generated from the design, so none of them can be stale — and openings are placed the way a builder talks about them: Bay 3, 1ft-4in off the post, not a decimal offset.
You can override a quantity, and it says that you did
A takeoff is a starting point, not a verdict. Change a quantity on a line and it is marked as edited against the measured figure, so the next person can see that somebody made a decision there rather than wondering whether the model got it wrong.
It says out loud what it is not
Every estimate and every sheet carries the same statement: a materials takeoff from the 3D builder, a design aid, no engineer's stamp, no labour, no freight, no supplier codes. Printing that on the document is what stops a customer or an inspector treating a quote as an engineered package, and it is the one thing a builder cannot afford to leave ambiguous.
- 1takeoffToEstimateSnapshot() produces the snapshot unpriced; the estimate layer prices it through fetchEstimatePriceBook, passing the LINE rather than a bare quantity so lumber bills against purchased footage.
- 2lengthFt is carried through the snapshot because steel and sheet goods are priced per foot — without it the workspace bills the count.
- 3Material rows expand per stock length and price through stockRowSellTotal so a row of 51 ten-footers bills as pieces times length.
- 4Per-line quantity overrides are supported and marked as edited against the takeoff value.
- 5The estimate carries an explicit disclaimer: unpriced materials takeoff from the 3D builder, a design aid, no PE stamp, no labor, no SKUs, no freight.
- 6buildInternalPortalSnapshot() freezes the same data into the portal's material-section shape so the client page does not fork.
An estimate that re-derives itself from a live design is an estimate that changes after the customer has seen it. Sending a design to an estimate freezes the building as it was, so the quote is a document with a date on it, and the estimate records which engine produced it so an in-house estimate is never processed as though it came from somewhere else. Each priced line carries its own unit through rather than a bare quantity — the shortcut that repeatedly made totals come out around a third of what the building was really worth.
- Re-keying a takeoff into an estimating tool.
- Estimates that cannot be traced back to a design.
- Two pricing surfaces disagreeing about the same building.
See it on your own jobs
Twenty minutes, your numbers, no slide deck. We’ll build one of your real buildings in front of you and send you the estimate link at the end — yours to keep either way.
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