Measure any PDF plan, right on your screen.

Open the drawing, set the scale once, and click. Get lengths and areas without printing a sheet or reaching for a scale ruler.

Download

For Mac and Windows. No account needed.

Try it on this sample plan Drag an orange end. Click a room.
Length
Area

Three steps. That's the whole job.

  1. 1

    Open your drawing

    Pick any PDF plan from your computer. Zoom and flip through pages as you would in any viewer.

  2. 2

    Set the scale

    Choose the scale printed on the sheet, or click both ends of something you know the length of and type it in.

  3. 3

    Click to measure

    Click two points and the length appears on the line. Points snap to corners on the drawing, so you land where you meant to.

Everything a takeoff needs, and little else

  • Lengths

    Walls, runs and openings, in feet, inches, yards, meters, centimeters or millimeters.

  • Areas, with cutouts

    Draw a rectangle over a room. Draw another inside it to subtract a stairwell or a column.

  • Wall runs

    Click each corner to add up a long path. Close it at the first point to get its area.

  • Notes you can find

    Pin a note to any spot, then search it later, across every project you've opened.

  • Saved as you go

    There is no save button. Your work comes back with the PDF, and undo fixes any slip.

  • A two-minute tour

    The app walks you through each tool on a sample drawing the first time you open it.

Your drawings stay on your computer.

Bid documents are confidential, so nothing gets uploaded. There is no account and no cloud. The app only sends something if you fill in its bug report form and press send.

Questions

Do I need any technical or CAD experience?

No. If you can open a PDF and read a plan, you can use it. The built-in tour takes about two minutes.

Will my PDF work?

Plans exported from drawing software work best. Scanned sheets and photos placed inside a PDF don't display yet, so a scanned plan may look blank or incomplete.

Does it run on Windows or an older Mac?

The Windows version is an early preview: it installs and runs, but it can't open PDFs yet. On Mac, you need an Apple chip (M1 or newer). To check yours, open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac.

Get Draft Metric

Current version: v0.1.5740

Download for Mac

Mac with Apple chip7.2 MB

Download for Windows

Early preview: can't open PDFs yet4.2 MB

Installing on Mac

  1. Open the downloaded file from your Downloads folder.
  2. Drag Draft Metric onto the Applications folder.
  3. Open the app. If your Mac says it can't verify it, go to System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and click Open Anyway. You only do this once. We haven't completed Apple's verification process yet.

Installing on Windows

  1. Open the downloaded file from your Downloads folder.
  2. If Windows shows a blue warning, click More info, then Run anyway. The installer isn't signed yet.
  3. Follow the installer, then open Draft Metric. You don't need an administrator password.