Plan Sharing and Distribution using Cloud Takeoff

This document contains information about:

• ·         Using the Discussion Tool
• ·         Sharing your plans with others
• ·         Working with plans that have been shared with you

Using the Discussion Tool

The Discussion Tool makes it easy to ask questions or maintain conversations directly on the plan set. To create a new discussion click the crayon icon and choose the Discussion icon as shown here:

Draw your new discussion box with two clicks – the first click places the arrow head, pointing at your topic on the plan. The second click locates and sizes the Discussion box, move your mouse away from the arrow to draw a larger box. Click a second time to place the box.

Next begin typing your question or comment and press Enter or Return to save your comment in the box. You may click See More to add additional comments.

Click Share This to share your comment or question with another person or persons.

When the new box opens begin typing a person’s name to locate them by name. Note: They may be found in this manner if they are in your company with a Cloud Takeoff license, or they have a (free or paid) Cloud Takeoff account and have ever logged into a project before. If found their name will show up in a drop down along with their company name. If you find the person you wish to share with click their name to add them to your sharing list.

Remove them from your sharing list by clicking the X next to their name.

If they have not logged in before, or you aren’t sure, simply type their email address. This will trigger an email to be sent to the person inviting them to your project and providing a link which they may click to log into the project and it will “zoom” them to your comment.

When they click See More and reply to your question or comment, you will be notified with a number 1 showing up on the golden envelope across the top of your screen.  You may click the golden envelope at any point to see all recent questions or replies and zoom to any single Discussion with a single click.

If you again reply to their comment they will see their golden envelope indicate a new message is waiting, and a single click for them will zoom them back to your Discussion.

Using the Discussion Tool is a quick and easy way to share your project with people if your purpose is to communicate on a specific issue.

Distributing or sharing your plans with others

TIP: Some of your invitees will only need to download your files, and not wish to use Cloud Takeoff. To make it easy for them, zip all of your plan/spec files into a zip file(s), then upload the zip file into the Specs and Other Documents section of your project. This way then can click once to download your entire set.

In many cases you wish to share your entire project set of plans with groups of people, perhaps subs, vendors, owners reps, etc. In this case you would take a different approach:

After your plans have been processed and displayed in your canvas, click the Sharing tab on the left side panel. This will open and display your name as well as a link at the bottom to share the project with others.

This will open the Share dialog box.  From here you will choose whether or not you wish for your invitees to be able to see your takeoff. Note: They cannot change it, and their default view will always be a blank set of plans.

Click the Generate button, and then click Copy to Clipboard to place a copy of the hyperlink onto your Windows or MAC clipboard.

Now open your email software and paste the link into an email to one or many invitees. Once they receive your email they can click the link to create a free Cloud Takeoff account, and have full access to your entire plan set. Your invitees may also perform takeoffs directly on your plans with the tools found within Cloud Takeoff.

If they perform a takeoff or mark on the plans in any way, including using the Discussion Tool, you may see the markups by clicking their name in the sharing panel to see their plans and their takeoff exactly as they see it.

Note: You may not change or alter their takeoff in any way.

If they use the Discussion Tool and share a comment or question with you, it will also show up in your golden envelope at the top of your screen as previously described. 

Downloading / Printing PDF files

If you have been invited to a project using Cloud Takeoff you may perform a complete takeoff using the takeoff tools provided by Cloud Takeoff. You may also use the Discussion Tool described above to communicate with anyone else regarding specific aspects of the project. (see above for details)

To learn more about how to perform takeoffs using Cloud Takeoff we suggest three different resources:

Daily Webinars – Join us in a webinar or watch a recent recording. Visit CloudTakeoff.com and click the Webinars link at the top of the screen to see the different trade specific webinar options.

General use video training – Click the help icon at the top of the screen to visit our help pages, then look for the link for Training Videos.

Trade specific video training – click the Video Help icon at the bottom right of your screen to choose from a variety of trade specific videos.

Download Plans in PDF form

Note: To print plans locally (your own printer or plotter or blueprint shop) or to download them as PDF, you must first create the PDF.

To do so follow these steps:

1.       Display the list of plans on your project by clicking the Plans link in the left side panel.

2.       Display the desired plans by placing a check mark next to any plan you wish to save / print in the form of a PDF.

3.       You may open folders by clicking the tick mark to the left of the folder name. You may display the entire contents of a folder by clicking on the small Gear icon next to the folder name and choosing to show or hide the folder contents.

4.       Once the plans you wish to download / print are visible (checkmarks next to each one), you may now click the PDF icon at the bottom of the panel to create a multi-page PDF file for download. This process takes a few minutes, once complete you will be prompted to download the file.

5.       Anytime you create a PDF file using Cloud Takeoff, a copy of the file is saved in the Documents section (left side panel), which you may choose to download later if you wish.

6.       Limitation: You may only create PDF files which contain up to 20 pages at a time. To download more than 20 pages you will have to repeat these steps for each set of 20 pages you wish to create/save.