Most estimators already have a quote spreadsheet they trust: their rates, their layout, their formulas. Retyping quantities into it from a takeoff is slow, and every retyped number is a chance to get one wrong. TrueScale Link for Excel links a cell in your workbook to a total measured in your PDFs, so the number comes straight from the drawing.

What you need

TrueScale, with the drawings measured and saved.
Microsoft Excel on the same Windows computer.

TrueScale Link for Excel is installed with TrueScale for your Windows user. You will see a TrueScale tab on Excel’s ribbon. If Excel was open while TrueScale was installed, it appears the next time Excel starts.

Measure with subjects you can find again

Links find markups by their details, so a little care while measuring pays off.

Give each kind of item its own subject: “Wall insulation R2.5”, “Downlights”, “Cable run”. The starter tool sets in the Tool Chest already do this.
Use layers, colours, labels or a status if you want to split one subject further, for example by stage or by floor.

Save the PDF when you have finished measuring. Links read what is saved.

Create a link

In Excel, right-click the cell where the quantity belongs, such as the quantity column of your “Wall insulation” line.
Choose TrueScale Link, then Create.
Pick the PDF (or several PDFs) the quantity comes from.
Pick what to total: Length, Area, Volume, Wall Area, Width, Height or Count.
Choose which markups count. All of them, or only those with a given subject, colour, author, layer, page, label, status or any other column.
Confirm. The cell now shows the total.

Your formulas carry on as usual: the cell next door can multiply the linked quantity by your rate, add waste and round up to whole packs.

When the drawing changes

This is where links earn their keep. When a revised drawing arrives, measure the changes in TrueScale and save. The linked cells update by themselves whenever a linked PDF is saved, whether you saved it in TrueScale or in any other program.

If you would rather update by hand, use Refresh All on the TrueScale tab.

Check where a number came from

Right-click a linked cell and choose Open in TrueScale. TrueScale opens the PDF with the markups behind that cell selected and zooms to them. It is the quickest way to answer “where did this number come from?” from a client, a supervisor or yourself a week later.

Manage your links

Edit changes what a cell totals, for example adding a second subject.
Delete removes the link from the cell.
Source Files shows which PDFs a cell reads.
Manage Links on the TrueScale tab lists every link in the workbook.

Build a template once

The real time saver is a quote template. Set up your usual lines (ceiling insulation, wall insulation, underfloor, and so on), link each quantity cell to the subject your tool set uses, and save the workbook as your template. On the next job, edit the links to read the new job’s PDFs, and the whole quote fills in.

If you use the same subjects on every job, which the Tool Chest makes easy, the template keeps working.

Or price inside TrueScale

You do not have to use Excel. TrueScale has estimating built in: give a measurement an assembly as its subject and it is priced at once, with materials and labour from your price list, waste, rounding, packs, mark-up or margin and tax. The Estimate panel (Shift+Alt+E) shows the total, and you can make a quote PDF or an estimate workbook from it. Many people use both: the Estimate panel for a quick price, and their Excel template for the quote they send.

Common problems

A cell shows zero. Check the filter: a subject spelled differently (“Wall Insulation” and “Wall insulation”) is a different subject. Edit the link, or fix the subjects in the Markups List.
A cell did not update. Make sure the PDF was saved, then use Refresh All.
The drawing was renamed or moved. Check Source Files, then edit the link to read the new file.

Next steps

If several people measure the same job, the free TrueScale server, which launches with TrueScale’s first public release, will let everyone work on the same files: How to self-host a markup server on your own network.

How to link PDF takeoff quantities to an Excel quote