Quickstart

The fastest way to learn Blueprint Crusher is to run a small project all the way through. This walkthrough takes about 10 minutes and uses real features end-to-end.

What you’ll need

• One supplier price sheet (PDF, XLSX, or even a scanned image).
• One drawing PDF you can practise measuring against.
• A blank project to play with.

1. Create a project

Projects are the containers for everything you do — drawings, takeoff measurements, the priced estimate.

1. Click Projects in the sidebar, then + New Project (top right).
2. Fill in the project name, address, and (optionally) a client.
3. Click Create. The project lands in your list as a Draft and opens on the Brief tab.

2. Import a price sheet

Populate your Rate Library quickly by letting the app’s vision AI read a supplier’s price list. Once committed, the products and their prices land in the Rate Library and stay available to every project you ever run.

1. Go to Library → Imports and click Upload Price Sheet.
2. Drop in the file, pick the Supplier, set the Price date (defaults to today). Upload starts automatically.
3. When extraction finishes, click Review to inspect each row, fix any pack/unit mistakes, and commit.

Full guide: Importing price sheets.

3. Upload drawings to the project

Back in your project, switch to the Documents tab to load the drawings you’ll measure off.

1. Open the project → Documents tab → Upload.
2. Drag in your drawing PDFs and click Upload Files.

Blueprint Crusher processes each PDF in the background — once processed, drawings appear automatically on the Takeoff tab.

4. Measure quantities and add a line item

The Takeoff tab is where you measure off drawings and turn shapes into priced line items.

1. Open the Takeoff tab. You’ll see the drawing register — every sheet detected across your uploaded PDFs, with calibrated scale.
2. Click a drawing to open the viewer. Use the toolbar to measure Area, Length, or Count.
3. Click + Item on the groups panel and the New Item modal opens. Name the item and bind it to an assembly and specification in a single pick — both are AI-suggested from your drawing context.

The bound assembly is what prices the line. The specification (e.g. F10/460 Mortar designations) keeps the item traceable back to the spec document.

Full guide: Measuring.

5. Price the items on Cost build-up

Switch to the Cost build-up tab. The app auto-creates a Takeoff Estimate document containing every item from your takeoff — ready to price.

1. Click Builder on the Takeoff Estimate row.
2. The Builder lands on the Overview tab — a snapshot of how many items are priced, partial, or unpriced.
3. Move to Rates. Each unpriced item has a Build rate button. Click it → Apply Assembly to pick from AI-suggested matches, your custom assemblies, or system templates.

The line populates with a unit rate, the assembly’s component breakdown, and (once measured) a total:

Click View rate on any priced row to inspect the full build-up — every component of the assembly, its quantity, its supplier rate, and its contribution to the total:

Full guide: Applying assemblies in takeoff.

6. Export the estimate

1. Once items are priced, open the Estimate view from the Cost build-up tab.
2. Click Export → Excel, choose your options (rates on/off, grouping, headers), and Download.

Full guide: Excel export.

That’s the full loop — price sheet to Excel estimate. From here, browse:

• Rate Library — products, prices, suppliers.
• Assemblies — variables, tips, and pitfalls.
• Estimates — when to export with rates on vs. off.