It makes takeoffs very easy which makes us more productive

I love how easy it makes plans to read and how fast takeoffs can be with this.

I didn't like how my computer will slow down and it bogs down with more takeoff items in it.

*Disclaimer* I declined any training in this product, so negative experiences may be the result of ignorance I've been using PlanSwift for nearly a year & am very happy with it. I use it exclusively for takeoffs, of which I have done over 600 this year. I would highly recommend it for takeoff purposes, but I have no experience with it's other functions & cannot offer any comments on them. Customer service was prompt & answered my questions to my satisfaction. They couldn't fix my desktop freezing problem (see below) & were not aware of it being a problem, but I found an acceptable workaround myself. I can't comment on value for money as I am not responsible for any budget in my company.

PlanSwift gives a high level of user control for the published result of the takeoff. I can modify takeoff colours, add notes, create my own legend (with notes), insert lines, arrows, etc. The takeoff functions are well designed. Adding an area to the same layer is easy, subtracting a section is just as easy & displays very nicely as a blank space which doesn't interfere with other layers or the original drawing. Modifying a takeoff shape or colour is very easy, as well as drawing curved shapes, copying shapes to same or new layer. Various layers don't interfere with each other, don't "fall behind", etc. Layers can easily be turned off & on. Scaling is excellent with preset dropdown & custom input available, allowing you to work in metric or imperial & scale in either without limiting your output unit selection (ie. scale in metric & get takeoff output in imperial units if desired). It appears to me that a lot of attention went into the design of the takeoff features. There are a lot of little things that make it much easier to use. For example, drawing a shape can take several minutes sometimes, & if you are interrupted & need to use another program you just have to move to another screen or minimize the program & when you come back you can carry on. Lots of programs force you to resolve the function you were engaged in before minimizing, but PlanSwift doesn't. This little thing makes a big difference when referring to another drawing on a pdf that has to be zoomed, or moved, etc while doing the takeoff. The published pdf is very easy to read, & looks clean & professional - a very high quality finished product is possible with this program.

The loading time is the biggest drawback. If I load too many drawings into the program at a time, opening the program, publishing a pdf, & organizing files within the program can take a long time. This also causes my desktop to freeze so that I cannot move files around or into folders until I restart windows, wait for my screensaver to come on, or sometimes it just fixes on it's own. This is silly, but it seems that the program loads every drawing in it's database when I open the program, so to keep loading times reasonable, I need to remove files from it's database when I finish with them. It's an annoying & unnecessary hassle. It may be that the program is designed to load several drawings for a single project & then file the whole project when complete; so this might indicate I am using the program in a way it wasn't intended. However, I don't want to file away each drawing when I'm finished & start a new project. The takeoff is the project for me, so creating a project for each drawing will end up costing me even more time, if that is how it is designed. Twice with complicated, multi-layered projects, I've had the program freeze when attempting to publish a pdf. Generally at the end of the day when I've already stayed a bit late to finish, & the takeoff is needed asap. This sucks. Restarting, loading the program & trying again takes 10-15 min. In both case it has not worked after 3 tries & I've had to relay the info verbally or use a screenshot instead of a published pdf. Honestly, out of 600+ takeoffs, that's not terrible - I'm assuming it has something to do with the file format and/or amount of info I tried to publish. I've had lots of complicated takeoffs with many layers & pages work just fine.

Low learning curve, very easy to use. Accurate quantities generated, and graphical representations of takeoff items (color-coding items on drawing sheets). Can be very flexible if you want to create custom takeoff tools or templates

Since purchased by Textura and then Oracle, the product has not improved at all. There is a clear limit to the number of drawing sheets that can be published; the program freezes or crashes if too many drawings loaded- this makes it a poor choice for large construction projects. Can be difficult to copy/paste transfer takeoff items between drawing versions, and can't transfer at all between project files. Also, navigability of drawing sheets could be easier- providing links to open additional sheets for referencing sections/details/callouts, etc.

Good, little glitches here and there, appreciate the ability to float the license from terminal to terminal

Value of the product and intuitive design for getting started for a beginner, easy to teach

Autocount is not very accurate It would be good to see some feature that auto-centers your takeoff mark over the object since you can fly through a takeoff if you could rely on the computer to center your marks, somehow integrated with the OCR it should be able to do that

The customer service team was really helpful when we were trialling out the software and helped us adapt it to our specific needs. No more paper plans! And if a floor plan changes, it is easy to add or subtract items.

We used to mark up paper floor plans with pencils and highlighters. We were looking for a way to go digital in this area. We looked at a couple different software options, and Planswift was the winner. We find the UI to be very intuitive. While we mainly just use the software to mark up items on floorplan, there are lots of other features, such as calculating areas and volumes and creating detailed estimates. There are a number of industry-specific plugins available to help you estimate (Siding, Concrete, Framing and Drywall, etc.) You can import any floor plan, even something sketched on a piece of paper! We generally import pdfs, but I believe you can import CAD files or jpgs as well.

There is a bit of a learning curve to learn the software and get set up. However, once you have it tuned for your business, it easily saves hours of time every week.

My assistant uses this software to take measurements off of blueprints. She loves this software before it she use to take hours getting measurements off of blueprints. Now she can get it done in half of that time and the numbers are more accurate.

I can't find a problem today this software has saved us alot of time when reading plans. I wished we found this years ago glad to have it today.

Overall Planswift would make an excellant addition to any company or end user looking to do material takeoffs. Planswift also has a great back log of videos that can be used to help you along the journey if you were ever to get stuck on a particular feature.

Planswift is one of the best and affordable products for anyone looking to do estimating. The ability to create folders and well ask auto count items makes for a simple yet efficient process.

Although a great product, planswift like most can be very expensive. However the efficiency of the software far outweighs the cost.

Overall I would recommend it for the price and the ease of use.

Easy to use and a quick learn. I like the tool palette and some of the summary features and report tabs.

It was supposed to be integrated with estimating platforms but we were never able to make it work and limited customer service.

This is a great tool for taking quick takeoffs. Allows you to upload whole plan sets or individual pages depending on need. The takeoff functions snap to lines seamlessly provide quick and accurate measurements.

Spending a little time on the front end can make estimating various construction trades easier, however this process is lengthy and will probably turn most casual users off.

* Easy to learn * Easy to teach * Easy to work

I am using this application for takeoff quantities and this application reduce 50% time to take of my time

I used this program for the entire duration of the trial I was permitted to use it for. While in use this program was highly efficient in is duty to serve as an upgrade to our current takeoff software. (See pros/cons)

- Can get square footage for concrete of massive plans in 20 - 7 minutes, as opposed to using something like Vu360, and (constantly crashing) taking multiple days to do a single takeoff for one PDF plan. - This program is organized, It comes with an integrated item list that (after you put your prices in for materials) can give you the equivalent of an excel estimate, as you finish the takeoff, and while you are in the middle of doing it. - There is a fill tool for getting square footage or selecting lines for linear feet, you can do supermassive takeoffs for concrete (as long as there isn't a cancerous amount of pointing lines dashing the entire plan) in seconds... - They just broke free from the shackles of oracle so now they have a bunch of awesome plugins back, Plugins such as 'convert takeoff into Quickbooks'... - The program was very quick, no memory leaks here, no lag. - Can be converted into excel

- High cost, this program is about $ or more PER install (gets cheaper the more you get possibly on a per-software basis), after all of your salesman deals and whatnot, (without any fancy online training) - Complicated at first, Don't try to show the program off to anyone unless you have spent a good 3 - 4 days experimenting with all of the tools, and asking your salesman for a live demonstration. It can be frustrating to know the tool you've been wondering where it is, is under your nose. - The program can only do auto ("one click area") (for getting square/lineal footage) selection for so much space, so on big PDF plans, you will have to use the cut tool to dice the plans into a moderately sized grid, of which it will then handle like a champ.

Very positive experience as the product is constantly updated. I would and do recommend this software to everyone.

- Ease of use - Layering Function (ability to turn on and off items) - PDF snap shot of take-off areas with legend to provide to sub-trades

The cost can be an obstacle for a growing company. I've talked to a lot of other Estimators who use this software and I feel departments always seem to be sharing several copies between multiple users as having a dedicated license for each user is cost prohibitive.

Overall, we love this product for our companies needs.

Easy to use and great support for training and technical issues. The support team works well to accomplish better performance and has a great system for followup and trouble shooting. The program itself is very intuitive to use for the takeoff section, and lots of autocad shortcuts work wtih planswift.

Building of assemblies is not straight forward. It is cumbersome to put them together. The reporting function as well is not as all encompassing as we would like to see it. Too generic in its applications with no real way to modify the output without great difficulty.

The takeoff side of the program was easy to use.

Uploading plans was time consuming, and no work could be done in the program until the upload is complete. No automatic plan page naming. The estimating side of the program is not user friendly at all. We use an Excel spreadsheet instead.

Used this software for two years for Mechanical/Air Distribution Equipment Takeoff. It is quick and easy to perform counts and linear/area takeoffs. There were some minor glitches, but once I learned how to avoid them I had no problems with accuracy/ease of use. The software has a lot of potential for speeding up takeoff with custom columns/properties, templates, that require some set-up by the user. When I first got the software there was a great plug-in store that provided added features, but unfortunately, that has been taken down for the foreseeable future. My biggest complaint is that support does not seem to respond to many of my emails or takes a long time which is unacceptable given the cost of yearly maintenance/support. I did not use some of the tools like parts and reports, so I can't comment on those.

Easy to get started with takeoff (counts, linear, area) and organize your takeoff items Fast takeoff, quick to load new pages/zoom in and out Custom columns/properties allow for in software calculations

Have to import pages to the software, has proprietary plan swift job files that make sharing a bit harder. Some glitches such as takeoff items getting jumbled when exporting/importing Have to create folders for breakouts/separating takeoff by page (without plugins at least) which can make things like room schedules a bit tedious.

I've been using Planswift for over 15 years and I love it. While there are other products out there, I feel Planswift gives me the most for my money. If you are looking at other products, I would suggest, that you factor in maintenance cost into your overall price.

Small learning curve, feature packed, ease of use, the overall cost is lower than most when maintenance cost is figured into the overall price.

New features could come out faster, not cloud-based, needs to be able to sync with tablets. Import DPI could be higher.

Overall has been great! ran into a licensing issue with one of my computers but it was the computer itself that was an issue rather than Planswift so once I had fixed the issue with the computer everything got better.

What I like about this software is that it is easy to install and manage. I also like the online portal where I can see all my licenses as well as what computers they are installed in and how long the license is valid for until it reactivates itself. The customer support is also great as I had remote support from them and they really stayed on there trying to solve the issue and escalated it to a supervisor when needed,

Not much to say about what I don't like since they did a really good job when I needed support with fixing an issue as well as it is overall easy to administer