On-Screen Takeoff - Avis

OST is easy to get up and running. It's intuitive and user friendly. I was recently introduced to PlanSwift - a competitor to OST and it was overly complicated. It was hard to figure out how to go in and just take the SF of a room.

With OST it's a breeze to take a simple measurement or do more extensive takeoff without needing an owners manual or even a tutorial.

Is the difficulty in naming sheets that are imported in. It's cumbersome and time consuming. It also makes it hard to relink to a different folder location.

The high cost for a single license is prohibitive to the freelance estimator and forces us to use alternative programs that aren't as efficient. I wish there was a way to make it cheaper for sole proprietorship businesses in the construction industry.

OST is flexable software, meaning it can be manipulated to conform to any/every trade. It is an amazing tool that makes any estimators take-off portion of the job quick and easy.

There is not much I do not like about OST, but...
- some times I could more color selections differentiation for take-off conditions
- Also it would be nice if i could freeze dimension takeoffs to either only move vertically or latterally respectively.
- Also if dimensions could be a default layer separate from annotation that would be awesome. Sometimes i want to have annotations but do not need the dimensions and i have to delete all the dimensions on the page to only show the annotation that i want.

Nothing is wrong with the software. I only have a problem with their unfair policy and practices.

I was promised that the on-center takeoff software could work with their cloud platform Oasis before I purchased. I found out afterwards this wasn't true. But their policy was not to refund although they made a promise that was false showing they value money over principles. Very misleading and I am sickened by the way they do business. Be very careful when dealing and purchasing their products. Better yet don't get involved in the first place.

Allows me to constantly and quickly take off plans that used to take all day to provide.

The software has been awesome for me in many ways but I wish it was more report friendly for people who are working outside of the standard databases and reporting schemes. I had to build my database from the ground up and how we export and report that information isn't typical for OST. Trying to build custom reports and exports has been challenging but On Center support was always there to help or at least let me know that I have hit a dead end.

It's easy and quick to use and easy to train others. I like and use the overlay function a lot. I also like the intelligent paste function as well for repetitious items.

Only 1 overlay possible, needs ability to remove the original plan and add an additional overlay as plans change (i.e.,80% dwgs to 90% dwgs to final dwgs. The 90% supersede the 80% and now we have final. A new bid file has to be created and the takeoff copied to the new file for adjustments)
Database bogs down on very large projects
Auto count feature doesn't work very well on scanned plans

Its easy to learn to use and if you get stuck on something the support staff are there to help and they have never laughed at my dumb questions.

I don’t know if there is anything I don’t like about it, but I wish you could copy text or images from a plan sheet and past them into a word document.

This program is great for our office and field personnel. Both can see the entire scope of work to be performed and know where each condition is to be applied on each floor of our jobs. Allows for better management of our labor hours and cost accounting too!

That I cannot download it on my iPhone! I have absolutely no complaints, I love, I use it everyday and I enjoy all of the features too! Just wish I could take it with me everywhere I went.

What I like about OST is it’s easy to use you can get the hang of the Badi oh very quickly and it helps you count items onscreen from a pdf plan or TIFF file.
Measures distances, counts and areas.

Sometimes it freezes on some plans that are heaven such as a lot of counts (over 6000) items on on plan, and crashes even when it can’t convert a file from a civil engineer

I like being able to organize areas and zones as well as share takeoff packages with associates who estimate different divisions.

I HATE having to rename pages one at a time that are combined; your competition has this feature that does it automatically (and its much cheaper)-you guys should have had this a long time ago. If this feature does exist in OST; please contact me to cure my stupidity.

Very easy to learn and use, K.I.S.S.
Quick to use
Doesn't require too much computer power

Printing to PDF using conventional bluebeam and/or adobe drivers doesn't work very well and we needed to buy an after market print driver to circumvent this issue.

OST is a very easy to use tool to do take offs with and what we like most about it is :
1- Fast Counts for areas, Linear feet, And counts.
2- you can overlay different versions of the plan on top of each other the old will be red and new blue that way you can see purple if noting changed or moved and blue if something changed.
3- easy to export to excel or other programs.
4- quick click links so you can jump between plan and detail fast.

1-2 people cant be in the same file at the same time and edit.
2- gets laggy with larger files and count items ( over 700 in one page from what i have seen)
3- Price.
4- cant Layer more than 2 drawings at the same time

The product is well designed and easy to use (except for the what is necessary to run the program on a virtual environment).

Cannot run the program in a Virtual Environment.

The easy use of the software, plus any questions are easily linked to a video showing you your answer. If the answer is not available online, a simple phone call to great customer service will provide direction and resolution of any questions or problems.

Currently I have had no complaints with the software, it works great!

This software is extremely intuitive, easy to use, and accurate. I have used various takeoff tools and this product has always been the best.

I wish the software came preloaded with takeoff items rather than having to create them or buy a database of items.

Very is to import architectural drawings. Able to easily trace and label various components of each section.
Take-off tab totals each section you are labeling. ie: LF, SF, Area.

Linking to multiple folders that contain drawings. copy and pasting various items could be easier. Organizing bids.

Easy to use, easy to copy conditions from one project to another, very user friendly. The software features a lot of different options mark up and bubble changes, type in comments, and, of course, color code take offs.

Creating overlays can be difficult, it would be great to have more color options and an easier way to scale and align two plans.

i been using it for ten years OST Takeoff and Quick bid it seems to work fine but i just require substantial time to synchronize both products

to expensive and you have to use quick bid to complement the product, data does not work seamlessly with Masterbuilders 100

menu driven and easy to follow. Every time I have a problem and call support I get a good response and the problems solved.

arc feature when doing areas. The program does not support arc creation by pinpointing the arc intersects when doing area, we have to plot points along the circumference.

layer and conditions features are very useful

can take a while to upload large set of drawings and it should automatically name the sheets by a pre determined title or number - but not a major woop

On Center's On-Screen take off is built to be easily set up in a team environment.
Giving the tools to effectively execute a take off to qualify a bid, they also provide learning resources online.

On Center's On-Screen take off is capable of a lot, however the one set back we have seen in our office is that when exchanging keys (which are needed to be able to save changes and can only be used by one device at a time) we realized that On-Screen disables any use when remotely accessing your device. This makes it very difficult as an IT Professional when trying to remotely correct software/user issues.

That you can dump directly into a spreadsheet

needs to be a little easier to simply write words or notes on the drawings.

Ease of use
Ability to create libraries of commonly used conditions
Customer support
Fast Loading
Ability to transfer data to other estimating software
Ability to export to excel
Ability to share entire takeoff file with other professionals

Cannot currently import an excel document with conditions to create a library
Cannot trace drawing lines automatically

Ease of use and flexibility customizing conditions for different building materials

Not compatible working through Citrix Receiver

Easy to learn and use. Everything in one software. Worth the money.
I would recommend this product to any organization who work on a lot of high end estimates.

No cons but they could try doing new features like adding color to areas to differentiate between them.

Very Easy to Use. It is the first take off tool that I ever used and have had no problem.

Some times no intuitive enough. It is the First Take Off tool I use so sometimes it was hard to find a common function.