Your first takeoff in 10 minutes

Step 1 — Sign in

Go to app.groundworkai.io (or launch the desktop app) and you'll land on the sign-in screen. Three tabs across the top cover every situation: Password for a normal email-and-password login, Magic link if you'd rather get a one-click sign-in email, and Sign up if you're brand new — the free trial starts the moment your account exists, no card required.

Groundwork Takeoff sign-in screen with Password, Magic link, and Sign up tabs

Step 2 — Open a plan

From the Home tab, open Projects and open a PDF plan set. Multi-sheet sets open as one document — page thumbnails run down the side, and the page indicator in the status bar tells you where you are. Once the sheet renders, you're looking at the full workspace: the drawing in the middle, the Quantity Takeoff tree and Library panels docked on the right, and the status bar along the bottom.

Full Groundwork Takeoff workspace with a floor plan, measurements, takeoff tree, and library panel

Step 3 — Verify the scale

Before you measure anything, glance at the status bar. If the page has no calibration yet, an amber Scale Not Set badge appears next to a Set scale… dropdown. Nothing you draw is trustworthy until that badge is gone — a wrong scale silently wrecks every quantity on the page.

Status bar showing the amber Scale Not Set badge and the Set scale dropdown

Open Set scale… and either pick the drawing's stated scale (say, 1/4" = 1'-0") or calibrate against a known dimension. Scale is stored per page, so a mixed set — plans at one scale, details at another — stays accurate throughout. The full detail is in Setting & calibrating scale.

Step 4 — Draw your first measurement

1. On the Home tab, choose Linear.
2. Click along the wall you want to measure — each click drops a vertex. The running length updates live as you go.
3. Right-click to finish the run.
4. Type a subject when prompted (e.g. "Corridor Partition") and press Enter.

Two committed linear measurements with dimension labels and their quantities in the takeoff tree

That's a takeoff. The measurement lives on the sheet and as a row in the Quantity Takeoff tree, where quantities roll up automatically. From here, try the other five — Segment, Perimeter, Area, Volume and Count — covered in The measurement tools.