Quote from Architectural Plans | Real Minds AI
Construction /Document Generation live field guide · 9 min

Quote from Architectural Plans

Reads architectural drawings, takes off the quantities — floor areas, wall lengths, window and door schedules — prices them against your rate card, and drafts a quote for the estimator to check against the plans and approve before submission.

theater/demos/construction_quote-from-plans.html · sandbox · read-only
Open
FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reads the architectural drawings, takes off the wall, window, door and wet-area quantities, prices them against your rate card, and lays the whole quote out for an estimator to check and approve before it goes to the client.

Input 01
The drawings + your rate card

The architectural set as PDFs or images — floor plans, elevations, window and door schedules — plus the rate card you price from and any project-specific notes about scope and exclusions.

Agent 02
Takes off, prices, drafts

Traces walls to linear metres and wall area, counts and sizes windows and doors, measures wet areas, then maps each quantity to a rate-card line and drafts a priced quote with a margin and stated exclusions.

Output 03
A draft, with its working shown

A line-by-line quote with every measured quantity, the rate applied, a confidence score and a list of RFIs, laid out for the estimator to check against the drawings and approve, edit or reject before it is sent to the client.

Where it works well

It does the takeoff every time, in full, and shows the quantity behind every line.

  • Done by hand a residential takeoff is two to four hours per tender — and the measuring is the first thing rushed when three tenders are due the same week.
  • Best for trades with a heavy takeoff component — framing, windows and glazing, doors and hardware, waterproofing, plasterboard, flooring, tiling — quoting from drawings regularly.
  • At ten or twenty tenders a month the recaptured hours go back into pricing judgement and chasing the work, not scaling PDFs.

The slow, invisible cost of quoting is the takeoff — scaling every wall, counting every window and door off the schedule, measuring each wet area, then tracing each quantity to a rate. It is hours of careful measuring that earns nothing until the job is won.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when it misreads a drawing — and a clean quote hides a bad measurement.

  • Weak on anything not drawn to scale or not dimensioned — it cannot measure what the drawing does not actually show, and it should raise an RFI, not invent a figure.
  • Weak where the scope is ambiguous — what is included, what the client supplies, what sits behind an exclusion — because that is a commercial judgement, not a measurement.
  • If most of your work is bespoke, design-and-construct, or priced off site visits rather than drawings, the takeoff gives you less than your own measuring already does.
The honest test

If you cannot say, looking at the drawing, whether it is to scale and whether the schedule matches the plan — this tool makes your wrong takeoff faster, not more accurate.

Point it at a low-resolution scan, an unscaled PDF, or a drawing where the window schedule and the plan disagree, and it produces a tidy, professional quote built on a quantity it guessed at. The total looks just as confident whether the takeoff was right or wrong. That is the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It drafts the quote. An estimator approves it. That boundary is deliberate.

WHAT IT DOES
Shows the measured quantity for every line and the rate it applied
Lists its stated exclusions and a confidence score on the takeoff
Raises an RFI for every element it could not read or scope cleanly
WHAT IT WON’T
Send the quote to the client
Decide your margin or commit you to a price
Confirm the quantity is correct against the real drawing

A submitted quote becomes a price you are held to, and once work starts a progress claim is a statutory right under the relevant state Security of Payment legislation — the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act in the eastern states, the Construction Contracts Act in the Northern Territory. A wrong takeoff is your loss to wear, and a misread scope can put a worker in harm's way under your work health and safety duties. The estimator stays on the decision because the consequence lands on the business, not the tool.

What your data has to look like

Drawings that are actually to scale and dimensioned, and a rate card the tool can price against.

44%
Typical readiness
across orgs we see, before the first job
Drawings to scale, with dimensions and schedules
Usual weak point
A current, structured rate card
Needs shaping
A defined trade scope and exclusion list
Needs shaping
Reference takeoffs from past jobs
Usual weak point
A consistent drawing format from your usual sources
Usually ready
The real first job

The rate card is usually the weak point — held in one estimator's head, or a spreadsheet last reconciled a year ago and quietly out of date. Getting your rates into a current, structured form, and insisting on measurable drawings, is usually the real first job — larger and more valuable than the takeoff layer on top. Once the inputs are clean, every quote after that is faster and priced right by default.

Right fit if…
You quote regularly from architectural drawings — ten or twenty-plus tenders a month
You are a takeoff-heavy trade — framing, glazing, doors, waterproofing, plasterboard, flooring, tiling
You can point to a current, structured rate card today
The drawings you receive are to scale, dimensioned, and come with schedules
Walk away if…
Most of your work is bespoke design-and-construct, priced off site visits not drawings
Your rates live in one person's head or a stale spreadsheet nobody owns
The drawings you get are unscaled scans or photos of printouts
You need a tool that commits you to a price without an estimator checking it
Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can measure a quantity wrong — which is exactly why nothing is sent on its say-so. It shows the measured quantity behind every line, the rate it applied, a confidence score on the takeoff, and an RFI for anything it could not read cleanly. An estimator checks those against the drawing before approving. A submitted quote in Australian construction becomes a price you are held to, so the tool surfaces the numbers and the estimator stands behind them.
It works from drawings that are actually to scale and dimensioned, with a readable window and door schedule. Give it an unscaled scan or a photo of a printout and it cannot measure what the drawing does not show — it should raise an RFI rather than guess, but a clean quote can still hide a bad reading. Getting consistent, measurable drawings from your usual sources is part of the first piece of work, and it pays off across every tender after.
No. It removes the measuring — the two to four hours of scaling PDFs and counting off schedules — so the estimator spends their time on the judgement: whether the scope is right, what the margin should be, what to exclude, whether the drawing can even be trusted. The quote is still theirs, and the price is still their call. The capacity it frees goes back into pricing and winning work.
Current to what you would quote today. Material and labour rates move, and an out-of-date rate card produces a confidently wrong total. The drawings must be the issued-for-tender set, because a superseded revision means you are taking off the wrong building. The honest test: can you say, right now, that this rate card and this drawing revision are the ones you would price against today?
Your drawings, rates and margins are commercially sensitive — they are how you win work against competitors. Any deployment runs against your own systems and data handling, not a shared pool, and we scope where the data sits and who can see it as part of the build. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data; the 3-bedroom residence at 47 Smith St is not a real project.
No — it is a pricing tool, not a compliance check. It does not certify a design against the National Construction Code, and it does not assess the work health and safety duties that attach to how the work is built. It quotes the quantities it can measure and flags what it cannot. Confirming the design and scope are compliant and safe stays with the people accountable for the build.
What it takes to build
4–6 weeks · 4 phases
Reused from template~65%
Bespoke to this skin~35%
stack · Claude vision · plan parser · pricing rules · review UI
What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

01
Bite-sized first piece
One contained change, low risk
02
Pilot build
Most builds land here
03
Embedded support
Scale on proof

Considering this for your estimating team?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one trade, one drawing type, low risk. Tell us where the takeoff hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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