Design, takeoff and bid from one model
Design it. Price it.
Send Kanopi your drawings. We measure them twice, price them the way you price, and hand back a bid in your own format, with a copy your client can actually read.
AI agent teams, trained under licensed architects and working estimators, do the drafting and the counting. A live human runs every engagement and owns the answer.
Kanopi in about 90 seconds. No sound needed: the captions are on screen.
What Kanopi does
Most owners buy the drawings from one firm and the price from another. Kanopi does both from one model.
When Kanopi draws the building, the Revit model flows straight into the estimate. No re-drawing, no second takeoff, no gap between the plans and the price. You can also bring your own plans and use the takeoff or the bid on its own.
Kanopi Design
Plans and renderings from one model.
An AI drafting team, run by a person, builds the Revit model and the plan set with you. A licensed architect reviews and stamps it. The same model makes the renderings.
You bring the site, the program and what you want built. You get back drawings a city can review, renderings that show your client the finished building, and a model the bid can be priced from.
For the estimatorClose
Drafting skills are captured from licensed architects at the Revit command level, versioned, and checked against deterministic geometry, egress and clearance math and IBC and IEBC gates; an agent must produce the same plan twice from the same inputs before it is trusted once. It runs first on our own building in Midtown Phoenix, a 1971 concrete shell becoming 22 condominiums.
Kanopi Takeoff
Every quantity, measured twice.
Kanopi counts and measures everything on your drawings, every trade, and measures it a second time without looking at the first.
Send any plan set: stamped, schematic, or a print with no dimensions. Quantities come back in your own spreadsheet in 24 to 48 hours.
For the estimatorClose
Vector geometry where the set is CAD, scale-calibrated vision where it is not, an overlay a person inspects, a blind second pass reconciled before release, and the tolerance printed on the face of the takeoff. In the blind study the quantities held (122 exact on a 121-unit hotel); no miss traced to a measurement.
Kanopi Bid
A bid in your format, a copy your client can read.
Kanopi prices the takeoff the way your shop prices, with your rates, your subs and your markup, and hands back a finished bid in your own template.
Every line says where its number came from. Your client gets an owner copy in plain words; you keep a working copy with the basis behind each line. The first bid is free.
For the estimatorClose
Lines by CSI MasterFormat division, each tagged Quoted, Takeoff, Assumed or Allowance. Margin-of-error bands by plan stage on labor and self-performed work (the AACE estimate-class logic), carried on the working copy. No live bid ships until Kanopi reproduces one of your won bids blind and reconciles it line by line.
The deal, in full
Your first bid, free.
Judge the work.
No pitch. No demo. A real bid on your real project, in your format. If it beats what you have, we keep going.
You send
One project with its plan set, a previous bid that shows your format, and how you price: rates, markup structure, templates. Rough is fine.
You get back
Your first bid, free, in your format, with your rates and your markup stack. Line by line, quantity times rate, each line tagged with where its number came from. Quantities in 24 to 48 hours; the priced bid once it reproduces one of your won bids.
You owe
Nothing. You keep the bid either way. If the work is not better than what you have, walk.
The words, plainly
An estimate is written in a language your client does not speak.
Every Kanopi bid comes as two copies of one estimate. The working copy carries the basis behind every line for you, your partner or a cost manager. The owner copy drops the internal notes so a homeowner can follow it. Same numbers, two readers.
- Takeoff
Counting and measuring everything on the drawings: feet of wall, number of doors, square feet of tile. Every price starts here.
For the estimatorClose
On a CAD set Kanopi measures the drawing's own vector geometry (walls, door swings, hatches, grids), not a picture of it, and draws an overlay a person inspects. A second measurement that never sees the first is reconciled before anything ships, and the tolerance is printed on the takeoff.
- Margin of error
How far the final cost could land from the estimate. Early sketches mean a wider range. Finished drawings mean a tighter one.
For the estimatorClose
Bands are set by plan stage, the same logic as the AACE estimate classes in RP 18R-97 and 56R-08 (Class 5 at concept, tightening toward Class 1 as design completes). The band sits on labor and self-performed work; a firm vendor quote carries none. It lives on the working copy. The owner copy leaves it off.
- Allowance
A placeholder budget for something your client has not picked yet, like tile, appliances or light fixtures.
For the estimatorClose
Allowances sit in their own section of the owner copy, apart from the priced scope, so a selection that runs over reads as a choice the owner made.
- Change order
A price change after the contract is signed, because the work changed.
For the estimatorClose
The owner copy flags the likely change orders up front, before anyone signs, so the conversation happens at the table instead of on the job.
- Where each number came from
Every line says whether its price was quoted by a sub, measured from the plans, assumed from past work, or set as an allowance.
For the estimatorClose
Four tags on every line: Quoted, Takeoff, Assumed, Allowance. A reviewer can go straight to the assumed lines and spend the review there.
- Markup
What a builder adds on top of cost to run the company and stay in business: overhead, fee, insurance.
For the estimatorClose
Kanopi builds the markup stack the way your shop does, read from a bid you already sent. In the blind study every out-of-band miss traced to a convention like this (scope tier, who supplies material, the FF&E boundary, the markup stack), never to a measurement.
- Cost codes
The standard filing system for construction costs: concrete in one drawer, doors in another, so anyone can find a line.
For the estimatorClose
Lines are organized by CSI MasterFormat division. An elemental Uniformat II view for early budgets is on the roadmap, not built.
- Calibration
Teaching the estimate to price the way you price, using bids you already won.
For the estimatorClose
You send two or three won bids. Kanopi reproduces one blind and reconciles it line by line on your rates, your markups and your scope boundaries until it lands inside the band for its plan stage. A total that lands by compensating errors does not pass.
Each term reads plain first. Open “For the estimator” for the method behind it.
The receipts
Eleven real bids, re-priced blind. The misses are published.
Before Kanopi was offered to anyone, the engine re-priced eleven complete bids from our own history without seeing them, then compared. The measuring held: building area on a 121-unit hotel within 1 percent, 122 individual quantities exact, vendor quotes reproduced to the dollar. The totals did not, until they were calibrated, and every miss traced to a pricing convention, never to a measurement.
What that means for you
The counting can be trusted. The price has to learn how you bid, which is why no live bid ships until Kanopi reproduces one of your won bids first.
What we do not claim
n=11 is the blind study, run on our own bid history. We publish no universal accuracy percentage and will not until calibrated live-bid results exist per client.
The difference
Software gives you a tool. Kanopi gives you the answer.
Takeoff software
Togal.AI, Kreo, STACK, Handoff and the rest sell software seats. Their AI drafts the takeoff; your estimator checks it, clicks the rest and owns every mistake. Their own terms disclaim accuracy and tell you to have “a qualified professional” verify the output. That professional is you.
Kanopi
Kanopi does the measuring and a human estimator owns it. Send stamped sets, schematic sets, even a marketplace print with no dimensions. You get back measured quantities, not highlights (linear footage, heights, surface areas, openings, every trade) inside your own estimating spreadsheet, so your team reviews numbers in the framework it already uses.
Every takeoff is measured twice. A second measurement that never sees the first is reconciled before anything ships, and the tolerance is stated on the face of the document. Quantities come back in 24 to 48 hours.
Where Kanopi stops
Kanopi builds and checks the number before the job starts. After award, budgets, commitments, change control, pay applications and earned value belong in the project system you already run. Kanopi hands off to it; it does not replace it. And we do not put a Monte Carlo P50 or P80 on a rate library that has not been calibrated to your bids: the range comes from the plan stage and your own history.
The competitive landscape
Every category leader.
One blind spot.
Kanopi against the takeoff tools most contractors evaluate today, on what changes your week: who does the measuring, who checks it, and whose format the answer comes back in.
Swipe the table sideways to see every tool.
| Capability | Kanopi | Togal.AI | Handoff | STACK | PlanSwift |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you buy | The finished answer | A software seat | A software seat | A software seat | A license |
| Who does the takeoff | We do, measured twice | AI drafts, your estimator checks | Your estimator | AI drafts, your estimator checks | AI drafts, your estimator checks |
| Accuracy | Stated tolerance on every deliverable | Disclaimed in terms | Disclaimed in terms | Disclaimed in terms | Disclaimed in terms |
| Independent blind re-measurement | Every deliverable | No | No | No | No |
| Delivered in your estimating format | Yes: your spreadsheet, your rates | Their UI | Their UI | Their UI | Their UI |
| Rough plans (no dimensions, photos, web prints) | Yes: scale-calibrated and verified | Limited | Plans under 5,000 SF | No | No |
| Where each number came from | Quoted / Takeoff / Assumed / Allowance | No | No | No | No |
| Measured by a builder | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Checked against vendor pages and published terms, July 2026. “Disclaimed in terms” reflects each vendor’s own published terms of service, which provide the software as is and place verification on the customer.
Who trains it
Not trained on the internet. Trained under masters.
Every skill in the engine traces to a working master: licensed architects three decades into practice, and estimators who have bid, built and reconciled real construction. Agents learn the way apprentices do, working under the master, every move corrected, every skill checked against geometry and code gates before it enters the library. You cannot scrape what was never written down.
How the Skill Engine worksFor architects & master builders
The masters who train Kanopi don't get replaced by it: they get an agent team that drafts the way they draft and prices the way they price, with their stamp untouched. Train the first skills, shape what the profession's next instrument becomes.
Get started
Price a project,
or quote a plan set.
For a bid or a takeoff, your first one is free: start here and judge the work on your own project. For Design, tell us the project and we'll send a fixed plan-set quote. Architects, partners and investors: use the same form and say so. We read everything.
One project. Your format. Free.
The first bid either beats what you have or it does not. You will know when you hold it, and it costs you nothing to find out.