Trace measurements directly on an uploaded plan, cross-check them against the printed dimensions with AI, and send everything straight into your room-by-room takeoff — no manual re-entry.
Reading Dims / Verify and Exporting are optional steps you can run at any point after Step 2 — covered in Sections 6 and 8 below.
📹 Prefer a video walkthrough? Full video walkthroughs for Blueprint Tool are in the works — check back here for the link once they're live.
Click the 📐 Blueprint button in the footer of the Measurement Calculator. The first time you open it on a project with no work yet, a short 4-step welcome banner walks through Load PDF → Calibrate Scale → Measure → Send to Rooms — check "Don’t show again" once you’re familiar with it.
Click 📂 Load PDF and select your file. PDF only — image files (JPG, PNG) of a plan are not accepted at all. If your plan is a scanned image, convert it to a PDF first.
Use the page navigator (◀ Page N/M ▶) in the top toolbar to move between sheets. Everything you draw — measurements, calibration, annotations, counts — is saved per page and restored automatically when you come back, including after closing and reopening the tool or reloading your project.
Click the Scale tool, then click 2 points on the plan that represent a known, real-world distance — the plan’s printed scale bar is the most reliable reference. A dialog opens asking how many feet those 2 points represent, with quick presets (5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 50 / 100 ft) or a custom field. The custom field accepts several formats: 15'-3", 9 6, or a plain decimal like 15.25.
A status chip in the top toolbar shows ⚠ Scale Not Set or ✓ Npx = 1ft for the current page at all times, so you always know before you start measuring.
Every finished measurement is automatically labeled (M1, M2…), colored, and added to the Measurements panel on the right — undo-safe with Ctrl+Z. If Quick Target’s Auto-Target is turned on with a room and field pre-selected, a finished measurement is sent to that room immediately instead of waiting for a manual send.
Snaps in-progress lines to 0°/90° angles. Hold Shift while drawing for a temporary lock without switching the toggle.
Shows or hides the floating measurement tags on the canvas. Labels can be dragged to a new position with the mouse when no tool is active.
On by default. There’s no toolbar button for this one — F3 is the only way to toggle it, so it’s easy to miss.
Every saved measurement appears here, grouped by type (Linear, Area, Rectangle, Arc, Combined) with a running total per group. Each row lets you 🔗 select for combining, ✏ rename, ⧉ duplicate (offsets the copy slightly so it doesn’t sit exactly on top of the original), 🎯 zoom to it on the canvas, × delete it, or expand it to send it to a room.
Select 2 or more measurements of the same type (all LF, or all SF) and a Combine bar appears — it merges them into one "Combined" row that sums their values. This is a display-only convenience for reporting; it doesn’t change any underlying geometry, and a combined entry can always be split back apart later with ✂ Unmerge.
Open it from the 🎨 Layer Manager chip — a floating, draggable, resizable panel. Every measurement belongs to a layer (color-coded); layers can be renamed, shown/hidden (which also affects on-canvas snapping), deleted, or filtered by search, and each shows a live count and LF/SF total. New measurements are tagged with whichever layer is currently active.
Click Read Dims in the top toolbar. This does not scan your whole PDF — it sends Claude (Anthropic’s AI) an image of exactly what’s currently visible in your canvas view, and asks it to find every printed dimension it can see and return them as a structured list in the Dimension Log. Zoom into the area with the dimensions you want read first — running it zoomed out on a full sheet will miss or misread small text. Results accumulate in a single log across your whole project, and each row can be sent straight to a room field or used to calibrate scale.
The ✓ button in the Dimension Log panel. It sends your current page’s measurements plus everything in the Dimension Log to Claude and asks it to sort every comparison into 3 groups: matches within 0.5 ft (green), discrepancies over 0.5 ft (amber), and plan dimensions with no measurement yet (gray) — with a short summary at the top.
Select a finished measurement in the right panel, pick a room and a field, then click ▶ Send to Room. Sending to Length, Width, or Height overwrites whatever was already in that field. Sending to a wall-condition field (e.g. a "New 2-Face" LF value) instead adds to whatever is already there — it does not overwrite. If you send an SF (area) measurement to a wall-condition field, Blueprint Tool automatically substitutes the polygon’s full perimeter instead of the area, and warns you first — for a partial or mixed wall condition, use the LF tool on just that wall instead.
Each row in the Dimension Log can be sent straight to Length, Width, or Height with one click — that’s the only 3 fields offered from this path (not the full field list you get from a manual measurement).
Click ▶ Send Counts to Rooms. Only doors and windows are written into the room’s actual fields on the room card. Outlets, switches, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and floor drains are NOT written to the room — they’re saved separately for a later Phase Analysis step. If you count outlets and click Send, don’t expect to see anything change on the room card for those — only a small confirmation badge appears.
Creates an annotated PDF of the current page only — your traced measurements, labels, counts, text annotations, and any whiteout boxes are drawn onto it. Measurements on other pages of a multi-sheet plan are not included in that export; export each page separately if you need all of them.
A checkbox in the Tools footer appends a Makai title block strip to the exported PDF.
When using the Count tool, a corner-position picker lets you place a symbol legend on the exported PDF so the counted symbols are labeled for anyone reviewing the marked-up plan.
Active only while the Blueprint Tool is open and no text field is focused.
| F3 | Toggle endpoint/midpoint snapping (no toolbar button — this is the only way to switch it) |
| F4 | Toggle measurement labels on/off |
| F8 | Toggle Ortho lock |
| Shift (hold while drawing) | Temporary Ortho lock without switching the toggle |
| 0–9 . ' " – space | While LF / SF / Rect / Offset is active with points placed: types an exact distance — the next point is placed precisely along the current direction |
| Enter | Applies a typed exact distance, or finishes the current measurement, or re-activates the last tool if none is active |
| Backspace | Deletes the last typed character of an exact-distance entry |
| Escape | Cancels the exact-distance entry, or the in-progress trace, or a selected count dot |
| Delete | Deletes the selected measurement or the selected count dot |
| Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z | Undo — removes the last placed point mid-trace, or a full history undo |
| Ctrl+Y or Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z | Redo |
| C (SF tool, 3+ points placed) | Closes and finishes the area polygon |
| Right-click | Removes the last count dot (Count tool active), otherwise cancels the in-progress trace |
| Double-click | Finishes an LF (2+ points) or SF (3+ points) trace |
| Middle-mouse-drag or Alt+drag | Pan the canvas |
| Scroll wheel | Zoom at the cursor |