Projects and plans
Upload plans
Bring a PDF drawing set in, and choose which pages you actually want.
Get a drawing set in
- Open your project and go to the Plans tab. If the job is new it will say “No plans yet”.
- Choose Upload plans.
- Drag your files onto the dialog, or click to browse. Tally takes PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and ZIP files, and a whole drawing set in one PDF is fine.
- Under Review each file, leave anything you want to measure on set to Import plan. Switch a file to Save as attachment if it belongs to the job but is not a drawing, such as a specification, or to Ignore to drop it.
- Choose Upload. If a PDF has several pages, a second step called Select pages to import opens so you can take only the sheets you want.
Why you choose pages
A drawing set is usually mostly pages you will never take off from: title sheets, schedules, standard details. Importing only what you need keeps the plan list short and keeps you from measuring on the wrong sheet later.
You can always come back and import more pages from the same file.
What happens next
A progress tray appears in the bottom right corner. You do not have to watch it: it says so itself, and tells you that uploads and page processing continue if you hide it. Each finished file gets an Open project link.
Tally turns every imported page into an image you can draw on. That takes a few seconds, so a thumbnail that is blank immediately after upload is normal. Give it a moment and it will appear.
Reading the drawing register
Each drawing appears as a tile with its name, the sheet size Tally detected, and two status chips. Set scale in orange means the sheet is not calibrated yet, so measuring is still switched off. Not started means nothing has been taken off it.
Click a tile to open the drawing. Above the tiles you can filter by name, switch between Tile view and Table view, change what the tiles show with Show & hide, change the sort, and select several plans at once.
Once you have taken something off, the line under the heading becomes a progress count, for example “0 of 2 plans taken off, 0 marked complete”.
Keeping plans tidy
Plans can be grouped, which is worth doing as soon as you have more than a handful. Use Add a group, then choose the group in the Add to group box while you upload. Group by level, by trade, or by however you think about the job. Anything you have not grouped sits together under Plans.
Scanned drawings
A PDF exported from CAD carries real geometry, and Tally can use it to help you draw accurately, with snapping and with Tally Assist. A scan or a photo of a printed drawing is just an image, so you get less help and should expect to be more careful. Either way, setting the scale is what makes the measurements real.
Measuring off an aerial image
New aerial plan, beside the upload button, takes an aerial or satellite image you are licensed to use, plus how much ground each pixel covers. Tally scales that plan for you, so a site takeoff can start without a drawing at all.
Next
Before you measure anything, set the scale.