Local library
Projects are kept on your PC, in Takeoff Studio's own library. The drawing and its markups save together. The free version keeps one project at a time; Takeoff Studio Pro keeps every project in the library.
Takeoff Studio help
The project library, autosave, drawings as images, backups, project packages and bringing in markups from other PDF tools.
Projects are kept on your PC, in Takeoff Studio's own library. The drawing and its markups save together. The free version keeps one project at a time; Takeoff Studio Pro keeps every project in the library.
Changes autosave automatically after edits. The Library can reopen stored projects without choosing the PDF again.
If a project has lost its drawing, load the matching PDF once to attach it again.
Load PDF, the library and drag and drop also take JPG, PNG and WebP files. The image is turned into a one-page drawing at its full resolution, so calibration, measuring and exports work exactly as for a PDF. Calibrate from a known dimension: an image has no paper scale of its own.
The project you had open reopens when Takeoff Studio starts. Turn this off in View Options (Reopen last project); the start screen then offers a Reopen button instead.
When a new issue of a drawing arrives, use Replace Drawing in the PDF tab. Takeoff Studio compares it with the old one and tells you which pages changed. Markups stay on pages that still exist; if only the paper size changed they are resized with the scale so quantities stay right. Markups on pages that have gone are parked, not deleted: move them to a page or delete them from the PDF tab. The same check runs when you attach a PDF to a project that was missing one. This is free. Pro revision compare adds the drawing overlay (see the new issue over the old one with every change boxed, then replace from there) and compares markups against a saved baseline.
PDF tab > Import Markups from PDF reads markups saved in the drawing by Bluebeam Revu or other PDF markup tools. Lengths and lines become length markups, polylines and ink become polylines, polygons and rectangles become areas, circles become circles, count markups become counts and text boxes and sticky notes become notes. The markup's label or subject becomes its name and its colour is kept; they are tagged PDF import. If the markups carry a scale and the page isn't calibrated, you are offered that scale. Arrows, highlights and stamps are left out. Running it again skips markups already imported. Bluebeam's own drawing of the markups stays visible in the PDF underneath.
Export a backup of your library for safekeeping. Restoring a backup, on the same PC or another one, needs Takeoff Studio Pro.
A project package (.m2project) holds the whole project with its PDF, for moving work to another PC or sending it to a colleague.