Drop the whole builder package in
Bidding for a builder has never been like bidding for a homeowner. There's no walkthrough, no phone photos, no five-second voice note. There's a package: a permit set that runs to thirty-seven sheets, and somewhere separate, a tile schedule that says what actually goes where.
Up to now BidCraft took one floor plan at a time, under 20MB. A real set didn't even fit through the door.
Now you drop the whole thing in.
Three steps, and only one of them is ever asking you for something
Drop the package in and a card turns up under your rooms with the job laid out on it: Plans, Tile schedule, Rooms & quick checks. Each one says where it's up to, what it's for in a line, and — if it's the step you're on — carries the only button on screen.
That third one matters more than it sounds. Plenty of builders send the drawings and the tile schedule separately, days apart. Before, if you'd only sent the plans, nothing told you the schedule was the missing half or that you could drop one in later. Now step 2 says exactly that, with Add schedule sitting on it, and adding one a week later lands on the same job.
It knows which sheets matter
There's a Plans box on every room card now, beside Notes, Image and Video. Tap it and drop the lot in — PDFs, photos of a printed sheet, Excel files and CSVs, as many as the builder sent, at whatever size they sent them.
You don't pick pages. BidCraft splits the set into sheets and works out what each one is. Floor plans, tile schedules and interior elevations get read. Roof plans, site plans, electrical and mechanical get skipped, on purpose — there's no tile on them.
A card under your rooms tells you where it's up to — Reading your plans — 37 sheets — and then what came of it, and what to do about it.
View sheets on that card opens every sheet we looked at, each badged with what it is. Most jobs you'll never open it. It's there for when something's off: tap a sheet and This is a… re-files it, Read this sheet pulls in one we skipped, and Try reading again has another go at one that wouldn't open.
Plans with no schedule? Pick your rooms right there
Not every builder sends a tile schedule with the drawings. The schedule is the part that says which rooms have tile in them — without one, a permit set is forty-eight rooms and no opinion about which of them are yours.
So the card asks: We read your plans — 3 floor plans · 48 rooms found. Which rooms are you bidding? — and lists every one of them underneath, grouped by floor, with its number beside it.
Bathrooms and kitchens start ticked. So does anything you named in Anything Biddy should know?. Tick and untick as you like, hit Create 12 rooms, and there they are — real rooms, ready for photos, notes and numbers.
When the schedule was in the package the rooms build themselves, same as before, and the card just says how many and points you at them.
Rooms with the spec already on them
Out the other side come rooms — with their plan number and floor, the way the drawings label them. Room 116 · 1st floor.
Tapping Plans from inside a room isn't just where the button happens to be, either. If the plan covers one room, that room lands on the card you were standing in instead of turning up as a duplicate beside it. And if you were still on an empty Room 1 when you dropped a whole set in, the first room takes that card over rather than leaving it sitting there empty at the bottom of twenty-one real ones.
Every one of them says where it came from, right under the name — From plans · Room 116 · 1st floor — and what the builder specified for it: Tile: Cotto Med 6x6 · 73 boxes (schedule). A room we know the location of and nothing else says that instead, and tells you the one thing that would fix it.
Inside each one: the tiled surfaces, their areas, the tile size and material and pattern, and the product the schedule called for — vendor, item number, box count, and whether it's approved or sitting on hold.
Rooms the plans show but the schedule never mentions don't clutter the list. They collapse into one line — 27 more rooms on the plans without tile work — and tapping it gives you the same list of rooms to tick, so a builder's late addition is a couple of taps rather than a room built by hand.
Every number says where it came from
There's a small sheet tag beside the numbers that came off a document. Tap it and you get the crop of the drawing with the room labeled, or the schedule row with that line highlighted.
That's the part that matters when you're checking a bid at 9pm. You don't reopen the PDF and hunt for sheet A4.1 — you tap the tag.
And where they disagree, it asks
Drawings and schedules contradict each other constantly. Three rooms called Laundry. A schedule that says 83 square feet where the plan measures 58. A backsplash marked HOLD.
Rather than pick one and hope, BidCraft asks you — one short question at a time, in plain words, with the sheet right there:
- Which room is "Laundry Room" on the plans?
- Which room is this for? — "Tile — Floor" (Cotto Med 6x6 Terracotta)
- Powder Bathroom floor: the schedule says 83 sq ft, the plan reads about 58 sq ft. Which should we use?
- Primary Bath 1 backsplash is on HOLD in the schedule — bid it, leave it out, or check with the builder?
The little picture beside each one is a button. Tap it and the sheet opens full size with the spot outlined — the label on the drawing, or the schedule row highlighted — which is usually all you need to answer it.
Every one has a Not sure — skip, so nothing blocks you. And your answer is remembered — re-read the documents next week after the builder sends a revision and it honors what you already said instead of asking again.
Biddy read it too
Ask her "what tile goes on the pool bath wainscot?" and she answers off the schedule. "Which rooms have no area yet?" and she lists them. "What's still unresolved?" and she tells you what's waiting on you.
She can settle things as well — which room a schedule line belongs to, two rooms that are really one, an area that's wrong — and you confirm before anything changes, same as always.
Full walkthrough: Reading drawing sets and tile schedules.