MeloBids · Resources

Everything you need to start.

How the first plan set goes through — upload, scale, schedules, review, price — and the questions estimators ask about what the engine will and will not do.

Getting started

The first takeoff, in the order the engine works: five steps, each landing on the feature it uses.

  1. Upload the plan set

    A vector PDF or a DXF. The set is split into sheets in the browser — page count, sizes, title-block text — before the worker reads it.

    See upload
  2. Confirm the scale

    The title block's scale is cross-checked against a printed dimension string, and nothing publishes on a sheet that disagrees by more than 1%. Half-scale details and re-plotted sets are exactly why.

    See calibration
  3. Read the schedules

    Finish and room schedules come in as tables, every cell validated against the plan. Extracted text is data, never an instruction.

    See schedules
  4. Review on the canvas

    Draw a mark to create a line; drag to recalculate; delete to remove the quantity. What the engine could not place waits in the review queue.

    See the canvas
  5. Price into a quote

    Your unit rates on the reviewed quantities, one click, into a draft quote with the source sheet on every line.

    See the handoff

Questions

Stake a Bid
On It

Upload a plan set and see what comes back marked — then check it against a takeoff you already did by hand.