Count every one

Point at one rooflight, vent or outlet and every other one drawn the same way is found, on this sheet or across the whole set, and shown to you before it’s counted.

Why you would use it

Counting is the most tedious part of a take-off and the one nobody trusts twice. Forty rooflights is forty clicks and a recount. The drawing already knows how many there are — each one is the same set of lines, repeated.

For example

What to do

1. Pick the tool and point at one of the things.
2. Click. With more than one sheet a window asks where to look; each sheet is listed with how many were found.
3. Untick any sheet, and leave out a legend or title block with an area.
4. Choose Create counts — they’re ordinary counts, one per sheet.

Going further

It compares the drawing's LINES, not a picture of them, so a match is exact rather than a resemblance and the answer doesn’t change with the zoom. It won’t match something drawn at a different SIZE, because on a building drawing a symbol drawn smaller is usually a different product. Turned copies are counted unless you switch that off. For slightly different copies choose Very close or Roughly under How alike: every match that isn’t exact is then shown against your example for you to tick off. On a scanned sheet there are no lines, so drag a box round one example and it looks for the same picture; every match is shown as a small picture, because a picture match is inferred. Each count records how it was found.

If you already use another program

In a CAD program: Selecting every block of the same name.

In a PDF markup program: A search for matching symbols: you box one example and every match is found, shown and ticked off before anything is counted.