Search Construction Plans
for Text and Symbols
Press Ctrl+F and find any text across the whole plan set, scanned sheets included. Draw a box around one symbol and every copy is found for your review, ready to become counts. No install, works in your browser.
How to Search a Construction Plan Set
Open Search
Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac) or click Search in the toolbar with your plan set open. Choose whether to search every page or just this one.
Type Text or Box a Symbol
Type anything to find text. Or switch to Symbol and draw a box around one example of the item you need counted.
Review the Matches
Results stream in grouped by sheet. Click a text result to jump straight to it, highlighted. Symbol matches arrive with picture previews; uncheck any that do not belong.
Add Counts to Your Takeoff
Turn the checked symbol matches into count measurements in one step. They join your groups, feed your material templates, and export with everything else.
Your Plans Become Something You Can Ask Questions
A plan set is a stack of answers with no index. Which sheets mention keynote 12? How many D4 doors are there? Where did the engineer note the panel schedule? Before search, every one of those questions cost a page-by-page sweep of the whole set, and the bigger the project, the more the sweeping cost you.
Plan search turns those questions into typing. Text results stream in grouped by sheet and one click lands you on the match, highlighted, with your zoom kept. Symbol search does the same job for things that are drawn rather than written: box one example and the software sweeps every sheet you choose. Confirmed results arrive checked by default with thumbnails, ready for you to inspect or exclude where needed.
Nothing becomes a count until you choose the bulk action. Only the checked results are added, so you keep control of the final quantity without having to approve each match one by one.
One Search Panel, Two Kinds of Finding
Text when it is written, symbols when it is drawn. Here is what each side gives you.
Text Search Across the Whole Set
Type a door tag, a keynote, a detail reference, or an equipment label and results stream in grouped by sheet. Click one and you land right on it, highlighted on the drawing, with your zoom kept. Search the entire plan set or scope it to the page in front of you. Sheet names match too, so "A-101" or "electrical" finds the sheets themselves, not just ink on them.
Scanned Sheets Read Automatically
Plenty of real plan sets are scans: an existing-conditions survey, a photocopied addendum, a set that lived on paper for a decade. Easy Takeoffs reads those sheets automatically the first time you search them, with nothing to configure and no OCR button to find. The reading happens once per sheet, so repeat searches are instant.
Count a Symbol from One Example
Switch Search to Symbol and draw a box around one receptacle, one sprinkler head, one light fixture. On drawn plans, Vector mode reads the sheet's own linework and returns exact copies in seconds. Image mode covers everything else, scanned sheets included, and an AI double-checks each visual match before it reaches your list.
Review What You Need, Then Bulk Add
Confirmed matches stream in checked by default with small picture previews, so you can inspect any result without leaving the panel. Uncheck anything that does not belong, then add the checked set to your takeoff as count measurements in one bulk step. Nothing becomes a count until you choose that action, and only the checked results are added.
Where Unsearchable Plans Cost You
Four jobs every estimator knows, and what they have in common: the plans know the answer and will not tell you.
The Tag Hunt
The spec references door type D4, and now you need every D4 on the architectural set. So you page through 40 sheets squinting for a tag the size of a grain of rice, and when you find three you are still not sure there is not a fourth. On paper this job took a highlighter and an afternoon. Without search, on screen, it is the same afternoon with better lighting.
Counting by Squint
A commercial floor plan can carry 200 receptacles, and they hide in corridor corners, behind grid lines, and inside furniture layouts. Clicking each one works, and the markers keep you honest, but sweeping every sheet with your eyes is the slow part. Miss six on the one sheet you skimmed and the material order is short before the job starts.
The Set That Cannot Be Searched
Scanned plans are pictures, not text. Open one in a normal PDF viewer, press Ctrl+F, and you get nothing, because there is nothing there to find. Older sets, site surveys, and faxed addenda all fail the same way, so the sheet you most need to search is usually the one that cannot be.
The Addendum Scramble
Addendum 3 lands the day before the bid and mentions keynote 12 on "affected sheets." Which sheets? Without search, the answer is all of them, one at a time, at 4 pm. With search, the answer is a list you can click through in a minute, with each hit highlighted on the drawing.
Plan Search Questions
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