She finished the takeoff in 6 hours—not 16. More importantly, QTO auto-generated a that tracked every counted object back to its source drawing. When the project manager asked, "How did you get 450 CY of class II fill?" Mariana clicked the hyperlink, and QTO highlighted the exact area on the drawing.
“You don’t need a full BIM model to win a bid. You just need takeoff that talks back to you.” autodesk quantity takeoff
Mariana, a senior estimator at a mid-sized civil construction firm, stared at a stack of 24 printed D-size drawings for a new highway interchange. She had two days to submit a bid. With a highlighter in one hand and a digital scale in the other, she began the manual quantity takeoff: counting cubic yards of concrete for barriers, linear feet of guardrail, and square yards of erosion fabric. She finished the takeoff in 6 hours—not 16
Her BIM coordinator mentioned an old tool buried in Autodesk’s ecosystem: Autodesk Quantity Takeoff . Unlike complex full-BIM authoring tools, QTO was designed for estimators . It worked directly with 2D DWF/DWG files and 3D models. “You don’t need a full BIM model to win a bid