Taking off quantities from a PDF drawing
Yes — Sparkel supports taking off quantities from PDF drawings. You upload your drawing, set the scale, and use the shape tool to draw over the elements you want to measure. Each shape appears immediately in the quantity table with its area, length, or volume calculated automatically.
How it works
Upload your PDF drawing to a project.
Set the drawing scale so Sparkel knows the real-world dimensions.
Select the shape tool and draw polygons, lines, or areas over the parts of the drawing you want to measure (walls, slabs, columns, rooms, etc.).
Each shape you draw appears immediately in the quantity table with its dimensions calculated automatically.
This gives you precise, fully verified quantities with complete visual traceability — every row in the table is backed by a shape you can see and check on the drawing.
Does Sparkel use AI to automatically detect shapes from a PDF?
Not yet. Automatically detecting and measuring rooms or other geometry straight from an uploaded PDF or image — without manually drawing shapes — is a feature called Autoshapes, which is still in development and not yet available. Today, shapes are drawn manually as described above.
Further reading
Shapes — full guide to drawing shapes in 2D and 3D
Key Concepts: Items, Linking, and Shapes — how the quantity table is built from shapes and linked elements