Exporting Your Work

Exporting a PDF

The download button in the toolbar (the file icon, "Download as PDF") opens a small menu: Download PDF and Download DXF. Download DXF exports immediately -- a CAD-ready file of the drawing. Download PDF first opens the Export Options dialog so you choose exactly what goes in the document; hit Export and the PDF builds and saves to your downloads, named Drawing-[your drawing name]-[date].pdf. If you dismiss the dialog nothing is exported, and if no sheets are selected the Export button tells you instead of producing an empty file.

The same options screen appears when you send a drawing by email from the app, so a sent drawing and a downloaded PDF are configured identically.

Export options, tab by tab

The Export Options dialog has four tabs: Pages, Display, Summary, and Estimate. (The Estimate tab belongs to the estimating workflow and isn't covered here.)

Pages is the master list of what's in the document, shown as selectable cards with real thumbnails of your views. Under Drawing Views you get the plan (tagged PLN) and every elevation view (tagged with the elevation's tag). The plan and every elevation actually used by an area start checked; elevations no area references appear but start unchecked. Under Report Pages sits the Summary card (plus the estimate card, from the estimating workflow). The button on the Drawing Views header selects or clears everything at once.

Display controls what layers appear on the drawing sheets: column gridlines, area labels, capacity labels on elevations, dimensions on the plan, and dimensions on elevations. The defaults mirror what's currently visible on your canvas, so exporting without touching anything reproduces the drawing as you see it.

Summary configures the summary page's sections: counts by area, counts by elevation, per-size dimension breakdowns under each total, and whether to deduct pallet positions lost to building columns (off by default, so the summary shows gross counts -- matching the capacity modal's default). Two extra fields set the contact name and email stamped in the title block of every sheet -- they're pre-filled with your account info, and editing them overrides what gets stamped, which is handy when someone else is the project contact.

Options that belong to an unchecked page dim automatically -- if the Summary card is off in Pages, the Summary tab's rows grey out until you re-include the page.

What the exported PDF contains

The document is letter-sized, one sheet per selected view, each sheet automatically landscape or portrait depending on which fits that view better. Every drawing sheet carries the same chrome: your logo and the prepared-by contact in the title-block strip along the bottom, along with the project and customer, the date at the top left, and "SHEET n OF N" at the top right. Report pages follow the drawing sheets and number themselves in the footer; the summary paginates onto extra pages automatically when the content runs long.

One nuance worth knowing: the summary page always reports the WHOLE drawing -- every area and every used elevation -- even when you export only a subset of sheets. A partial export with the summary included still gives the reader complete totals.