OST - 11.01 Advanced Plan Organization

Plan Organization

One of the main things you do with On-Screen Takeoff is view and navigate Plans. It's important to understand some concepts so you are as efficient as possible.

As projects/bids progress, you may accumulate more plans or even replacement revisions of plans. Organizing these revisions not only makes navigating them easier, but lets you use Overlays to compare the differences between one set and another.

Plan Organization includes:

• Improving Navigation - making it easier for you and other users to navigate through the many plans in a project.
• This includes updating names and sheet numbers, organizing the sequence of plans, assigning discipline/placing plans in folders.
• Making your plans look their best
• This includes straightening (what we call de-skewing), sharpening, darkening, rotating, and using high resolution displays.
• Converting various image files types (PDFs, CAD files) to TIFFs so they load faster.
• Fixing broken links - sometimes, files get moved, this breaks the link OST has to the files, meaning OST can't display your plans.
• One of the most important things is Revision management. You're likely going to get updates to your plans as your project progresses. 
• OST allows you to compare two plans to see the differences using the Overlay function. 

Using the Virtual Page Assignment Tool to Allocate Takeoff on Repeating Pages to the Appropriate Bid Areas

Making it easier to Navigate Pages