BidCraft Tile
BidCraftTile
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2026-09-22

Some floor sizes are now measured off the drawing, not read off it

On a CAD drawing set, we can trace the room on the sheet itself and measure it at the sheet's own scale. Those sizes say "measured off the plan" and come out the same every time.

Some floor sizes are now measured off the drawing, not read off it

A drawing set from a designer or an architect is usually not a picture of a plan — it is the plan. Every wall, every shower curb, every cabinet is in the file as real line work, and the title block prints the scale it was drawn at.

So on those sets we no longer have to squint at a room. We trace it.

What changed on the surface

When we can measure a floor this way, the size on the surface says:

60.2 sq ft measured off the plan

instead of the dashed orange

~48 sq ft suggested

They look different on purpose. A suggested size came from reading a picture of the sheet; it's a starting point. A measured size came from following the walls the drawing actually drew and converting at the drawing's own scale — so it comes out the same every single time, and the little page marker beside it opens the sheet with the room framed, so you can see exactly what got measured.

Both are still yours to accept. Tap Use and it becomes your number, same as before. Nothing prices off a size you haven't taken.

What it measures, and what it doesn't

  • It measures the floor, wall to wall — including the bit under the vanity, because that's the floor you tile.
  • It stops at a shower curb, so a shower that's priced as its own pan doesn't get counted into the room floor.
  • It stops at a doorway, because every room on the sheet is traced at the same time and two rooms meet in the opening between them.

When it declines

It will often decline, and it says so quietly rather than guessing:

  • the sheet doesn't print a scale;
  • the drawing isn't real line work (a scan or a photo of a plan);
  • the room's label sits on top of a cabinet and there's no clear floor beside it;
  • the trace ran out of the room — through an opening into a hall or a lanai that the sheet never named.

Any of those and the room falls back to the way sizes were read before. You lose nothing.

Where this is heading

Update, later the same week: it got there. Measured floors now arrive already filled in rather than offered — see Floor areas measured off your drawings, not guessed at. Everything above still holds; the only thing that changed is that you no longer have to tap Use on a floor the drawings measured, and typing your own number over it still wins.

When this was written it was careful rather than bold: on the test set we measure against a real finished bid, it got some rooms right and declined or missed on others, so every measured size was offered rather than filled in. Two things it stumbled on then — a room that opens onto a space the drawings never labelled pulling the trace out with it, and a tile pattern drawn on the floor cutting it into pieces — are both fixed.