Construction software you own
You buy it once, install it on hardware you already have, and it's yours after that. Your drawings and your job numbers stay in the building. There's no account to make, and no cloud for me to shut off later.
Free for one person, paid work included. Office is $250 a seat, paid once. Pricing
Your jobs on shelves, the way you keep your files.
In the Studio with Office: active jobs, bids and past jobs by year, and each job's drawings in the folders they came from. And every copy now says what's new when it updates.
- Shelves like your file serverActive Jobs, Bids by year, Lost Bids by year and Past Jobs by year. Each folds away and says how many are on it.
- Jobs move themselvesA bid won goes to Active Jobs, a lost one to Lost Bids, a finished job to Past Jobs. Your estimating system moves it through the API, so nobody drags it.
- Drawings in their own foldersInside a job, the drawings sit in the folders they came from in the job's files, like 01 Drawings and 10 Shop Drawings. Nothing else from the share comes with them.
- Same sheet, two folders, two drawingsS-101 for approval and S-101 for fabrication stay separate. A drawing issued again replaces only the one in its own folder, and its takeoff comes across to check.
- Updates say what's newA new version opens a box in the middle of the window with what's in it, and Restart now or Later. Nothing restarts on its own.
- The API only growsA route or field your program uses is never renamed or taken away. Every release is checked for it before it's built.
I estimate structural steel in Pueblo. A few years back our office was paying monthly for three separate programs, and every one of them wanted our drawings sitting on somebody else's server. I asked one vendor who else could read them and never got a straight answer.
So I started writing our own. You buy it once and it runs on a machine in your shop. If I go under, your copy keeps working, which is the part I could never get any of them to put in writing.
Takeoff came first because that's the job I do all day. It won't be the only one.
Pueblo, Colorado
What's in it
The desktop app is free for one person, every tool included. Office adds the server that puts the rest of the shop on the same set.
Measure off the sheet
Length, area, count, volume and angle at the drawn scale, snapping to the linework.
Tool chests
Your .bpx and .btx chests load with their weights. Or buy one already checked. Chests
The markups list
Every markup grouped and added up, out to Excel, CSV or PDF.
Shop List
The same takeoff as a cut list, nested into your stock lengths.
Compare and Revision Cost
What moved between two issues, and what it's worth.
Markup
Text, callouts, clouds, stamps and signatures, saved as ordinary PDF.
Document tools
Combine, split, slip sheet, number pages, OCR, redact and lock.
Steel models in 3D
Open the detailer's IFC, turn it, and total its tonnage. Models
Office server
Shared sets and live markups, on a machine you own. Office
Plugins
Your own checks, run in a sandbox. A fix happens only when somebody clicks it.
Sealed
Every outbound connection off, for defense work. Sealed
Windows and Mac
The same program on both. iPad and Android are being built. Tablets
Thirty-five seconds on a real set
Opening a set, measuring off the sheet at the drawn scale, and the markups landing on the shop list. No narration, nothing sped up.
And the detailer's model, in 3D
Open the IFC from Tekla or SDS2 and the whole model is on screen in a moment, with its tonnage by profile from the weights the detailer's program wrote. Click a piece for its mark and weight, measure between two corners, or pick a row of the takeoff and watch those pieces light up.
Save a picture of it for a proposal, or leave it turning on a screen in the lobby. It's in the free version.
What I make
Same rules for all of it. Your hardware, your data, paid for once.
Excalibur View
Out now, on Windows and Mac. Open a set, measure off it, and the cut list and tonnage at the end trace back to what you clicked. Open the detailer's model in 3D with its tonnage. Free for one person, Office for the rest of the shop.
What View doesExcalibur Citadel
Early access. Bids, drawings, RFIs, daily reports, contracts and a portal for your subs, sitting on your server instead of one you rent.
What Citadel doesWhat's next
The rest of the jobs I do every week, and View on iPad and Android tablets. What gets built first is whatever the people using this say is hurting worst, so if you want a say in the order, tell me.
Tell me what you needWhat this is for
A contractor will own half a million dollars of equipment outright and then rent the software that keeps the record of what it built. Per seat, per month, with no end to it. Stop paying and the drawings your estimators marked up are behind a login you don't have anymore.
For a fifteen-person shop that is a bad trade, and it's most of what's on offer. This is built the other way round. You pay once, it runs on hardware you already have, and anything you put in comes back out in formats other programs can read. A shop that size should be able to run a serious operation without renting its own history back from anybody.
Where your data actually goes
Every destination the software can reach, out of the box. If you find one that isn't on this list, tell me.
I never receive your files, so there is nothing at my end to breach, subpoena or lose. That's also why there isn't going to be a cloud version, however often I get asked for one.
Releases ship with a SHA-256 you can check before you install. Licenses are signed files your own server reads offline. Markups stay ordinary PDF, so if I got hit by a truck tomorrow your work still opens in whatever you switch to.
Who it's for
Offices that spend the day in drawing sets and would rather not spend it in a browser tab.
Fabricators and erectors
Steel takeoff off your own chests, with a cut list and a tonnage at the end. This is the one I built first, since it's the work I do.
Subcontractors
Measure and bid off the same set the GC sent you, without needing a seat on their system or leaving your numbers sitting on it.
General contractors
Citadel keeps the whole job on hardware you control: bids, RFIs, dailies, contracts and the subs.
Defense and secure work
Sealed runs with no outbound connection at all, for shops with contract language about where data may sit.
Put it on your own drawings
Free for one person, no account, no time limit. Open a set you already priced and see whether the numbers land where you expect them to.