Ask Your Drawing a Question | AI Takeoff Assistant for Subcontractors | TradeOff

Takeoffs have always been a reading exercise. You open the PDF, hunt for the spec, count the symbols, check the scale, and hope you haven't missed a revision cloud.

It's slow, and the margin for error is real.

Today we're releasing something we've been testing quietly for a few weeks: Ask the Drawing.

It's an AI chatbot built directly into the TradeOff takeoff screen. You ask a plain-English question about the drawing you've got open, and it answers, with a source citation so you can see exactly where it pulled the information from.

Ask it "how many FD30 fire doors?" and it counts them. Ask "what's the scale on this sheet?" and it tells you. When the answer is a quantity you'd want in your estimate, a green Add to Estimate button appears. One tap and it's in.

It works across multi-page documents too. You're not limited to a single sheet — ask a question and it searches the whole drawing pack for the answer. And because it runs in the browser, you can pull up a set on your phone, ask a question on site, and have a rough quantity in your estimate before you've walked back to the van. No laptop required for a first-pass price.

Ask the Drawing is live now for all TradeOff users. Try it on a live job and let us know what it gets right and where it falls short — we're building this with subbies in the field, and your feedback shapes what comes next. The goal has always been the same: less time in the drawing, more time pricing the work properly.

Try it now for free tradeoff.blueshuckconsulting.com