Take-off on drawings · DPGF · Lump-sum contract
You measure on the PDF drawing, PDF Mirror folds the measurements into items and produces the workbook: one sheet, one line per item, numbered, with unit, quantity, unit price and amount. Quantities are locked, prices are not.
Three moves, no retyping
Measuring fast is pointless if the quantities go back into a spreadsheet by hand. That is where figures get lost, and it is the one step to remove.
1 — Measure
The drawing is scaled once, then you draw: lengths, areas, perimeters, volumes. Every measurement carries its label and its group, and the subtotals follow by themselves.
2 — Fold into items
The concrete of a wall adds up across the whole site, its formwork too, and the two stay two items — you do not pour square metres. The order is the site’s, from structure to finishes, not alphabetical.
3 — Produce the workbook
An .xlsx workbook ready to attach to the tender call. The detailed take-off stays available separately: it answers “where does that figure come from”, the DPGF answers “how much, and for what”.
The workbook, column by column
At the top of the sheet: the company issuing the document, the site and the date. Then the trades, and under each trade its items.
| Column | Content | Editable |
|---|---|---|
| Number | “03.02”: the trade, then the item within that trade. | No |
| Description | The item’s wording, exactly as it comes from your catalogue. | No |
| Unit | m, m², m³, item — the measurement’s own. | No |
| Quantity | The measured total, across all zones. | No |
| Unit price | Empty in the tender call, filled in by the contractor. | Yes |
| Amount excl. VAT | Quantity × price, recalculated by the spreadsheet. | Formula |
Under each trade, its subtotal. At the foot of the sheet, the total excluding tax, the VAT and the total including tax. These are not frozen numbers: they are formulas. The contractor types in their unit prices, and the amounts, subtotals and totals recalculate in front of them.
The numbering is not decoration. “03.02” is the reference by which a specification and a tender speak to each other, and it is what lets three returned bills of quantities be compared line by line, without realigning them by hand.
What is locked, and why
Quantities are protected, unit prices are not. The protection has no password: it is not there to prevent anything, but so that a quantity is never changed without anyone noticing. A contractor who disputes a take-off says so; they do not quietly correct it in the cell.
You decide at export time whether the workbook goes out with your prices — your estimate — or without them, so the contractor prices it.
And in Luxembourg
France has no standardised exchange format for take-offs: the DPGF is a convention, not a standard, which is why workbooks are what people send. Luxembourg does have one — since 2008 the CRTI-B has published an XML format for calls for tender and cost estimates.
PDF Mirror writes both, from the same folding of the measurements: two paths to the same quantity would give two answers, and it is the client who would find the wrong one. See the CRTI-B tender document.
FAQ
No. It is a standard .xlsx file: Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers all open it, and the formulas work.
The detailed take-off gives one line per zone of the drawing, with the page, the group, the label and the calculation written out: it is made to be challenged line by line. The DPGF gives one line per item, numbered, and nothing else: it is the document attached to the tender call. PDF Mirror produces both.
Yes, that is the choice you make when exporting. Without prices the column is empty and the contractor fills it in; with your prices, the workbook is your estimate.
You export again. The folding into items is redone from the measurements: there is no intermediate file to keep up to date.
The Measure module also exports to your own Excel sheets: you place variables wherever you like, PDF Mirror adds one line per measurement and your formulas extend with them.
Yes. Without the Métré edition, Measure and Consultation open in demo mode: you take off your own drawings and build the bill of quantities, with no time limit. Only saving and exports — the DPGF included — need the licence.
No. PDF Mirror works on your own machine. No drawing, no take-off and no bill of quantities is sent to AMS Studio or to anyone else.