Uploading and organising

Upload and Choose file bring documents in. The work worth doing is in how you title them.

Titling

Document Title is what everyone sees — in the Take-Off drawing picker, in the tender attachment list, on the order.

Use the drawing’s own title and number:

Weak	Better
plans.pdf	A-101 Floor Plan
engineering	S-201 Slab Layout and Details
client stuff	Selections Schedule — Hendricks
scan001.pdf	Soil Report — 18 Beach Road

Use the architect’s numbering, not your own. When they email about A-101 you want to find it without translating.

Suggest Title proposes one from the file name — usually a good start when the file was named sensibly by whoever issued it.

Structure

Select a Node places a document in the project’s structure, which keeps a large set navigable.

A structure that works for most jobs:

Architectural
Structural
Civil and drainage
Services
Reports and assessments
Certificates and approvals
Client selections
Contracts

Match whatever the consultants use if they have a convention. Fighting their structure to impose your own means translating every time they issue something.

Do not build a deep tree

One level covers most residential jobs. The filter and search do the work that folders do elsewhere, and a document three levels down is harder to find, not easier.

What to upload

Everything the job runs on:

• Drawings — architectural, structural, civil, services
• Specifications and schedules
• Reports — soil, energy, bushfire, engineering
• Permits and approvals
• The contract and its annexures
• Client selections

The test is whether anyone would need to find it later. If yes, it belongs here rather than in a mailbox.

Notes

Note records anything worth knowing about a document: what changed in this revision, why a report was commissioned, what a drawing supersedes.

Most useful on revisions. “Rev C — alfresco extended 1m, window W4 deleted” tells whoever picks it up next exactly what to check, and it is the note that makes a Take-Off carry-over review quick.

Filtering and archiving

Filter narrows a long list. Show Archived brings back documents that have been put away.

Archive superseded material rather than deleting it. A superseded drawing is sometimes exactly what you need — to show what was issued at the time a price was given.

Obsolete documents

This file is obsolete marks a document as no longer current without removing it.

Use it for a drawing that has been withdrawn entirely rather than superseded, or a report that no longer applies. The record stays; the flag stops anyone measuring off it by accident.

Before you take off

Two things worth checking before opening a drawing in Take-Off:

1. It is the current revision. Measuring a superseded drawing is a whole afternoon lost.
2. It is a real PDF, not a renamed image or an office document. Take-Off will not open those.