STACK

By audience

Estimator

• Runs quantity takeoff directly on uploaded PDF/digital plans — area, linear, arc, pitched, count and volume — instead of scaling paper or marking up in a viewer.
• Converts takeoff quantities into a priced estimate in the same tool, adding labor, equipment, waste, overhead, tax and margin without exporting to a separate estimating package.
• Builds and reuses items, assemblies and takeoff templates so a repeat bid type is priced consistently across estimators.
• Uses Plan Overlay to see what changed between drawing revisions before re-bidding, which is where missed revisions become change orders.
• Sends the finished estimate to accounting/ERP (Sage, Acumatica, QuickBooks) rather than rekeying it into a budget.

General Contracting

• Centralizes bid-set plans, specs and addenda in a searchable plan room with OCR and sheet hyperlinking so the bid team works off one document set.
• Produces internal budget/conceptual estimates to sanity-check subcontractor pricing before award.
• Pulls bid documents in from plan rooms and bid boards (Dodge, Pantera, Procore) so a pursuit starts without a manual download-and-upload step.
• Uses the measurement-level audit trail to see who changed a scale or a quantity when a bid number looks wrong.

Specialty Contracting

• Trade subcontractors — concrete, drywall, flooring, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, steel and others — take off their own scope off the GC's plan set and return a priced proposal.
• Autocount finds repeated plan symbols (devices, fixtures, openings) so device-heavy trades stop hand-counting.
• Aerial imagery takeoff measures exterior scope — roofs, paving, site work — without a site visit.
• Custom assemblies encode a crew's own material-and-labor build-ups, which is how a small sub keeps pricing consistent without a trade cost database.

Owner/Developer

• Runs independent quantity and cost checks against contractor pricing during bid evaluation.
• Produces early order-of-magnitude budgets from concept drawings before a GC is engaged.
• Keeps the bid-phase document set and its versions in one place for the record.

By phase

Pre-Construction

• Bid/no-bid evaluation: plans and specs are loaded, organized and searched to scope the opportunity before committing estimating hours.
• Quantity takeoff against the bid set, with version overlay catching addenda and drawing revisions.
• Cost estimating and proposal generation — items, assemblies, labor and margin — ending in the number that goes out with the bid.
• Handoff to accounting/ERP once the job is won, so the winning estimate becomes the job budget and cost codes rather than being retyped.