Construction plans are the foundation of every project. Conduit lets you upload your PDFs, organize them by trade automatically, and start measuring right from the plan viewer.
01Upload documents
From any project’s detail page, switch to the Plans tab. The first time you visit, you’ll see the empty state.
- Plans tab. One of the 13 project tabs — every project has its own Plans tab.
- + Upload Document. Top-right button. Click to open the upload sheet.
- Empty state. “No documents uploaded yet” placeholder until you add the first plan.
The upload sheet itself accepts:
- PDFs, images, Word docs, and Excel files — all four formats are supported.
- Document type: Plan/Blueprint, Permit, Contract, Photo, or Other. The type drives where the doc shows up later (Plans-tab views vs. Files-tab views).
- Name: defaults to the filename; override if useful.
- Upload progress: the file goes directly to cloud storage with a live progress bar.
Multi-page plan sets are handled natively — a 30-page plan set is one upload, not 30.
02The plan viewer
Open any uploaded PDF to enter the plan viewer.
- Stacked scroll. Pages stack vertically; scroll like a normal document.
- Zoom. Hold Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) and scroll. Up to 3x magnification.
- Pan. Click and drag when zoomed in.
- Page indicator. Top of the viewer; shows “Page 5 of 30” updating as you scroll.
- Page jumps. Click the page indicator to type a page number.
03AI section detection
Click Detect Sections at the top of the plan viewer. Conduit’s AI reads the entire plan set and identifies sections by trade.
- Trades detected: Electrical (yellow), Plumbing (blue), Mechanical (orange), HVAC (cyan), Structural, Architectural, Civil, and more.
- Page ranges. Each section gets a start/end page so you can jump directly.
- Title block parsing. Reads the official title block (typically right side, bottom-right of each page) for accurate identification.
- Schedule sections. Detected separately from drawings.
- Background processing. Large plan sets (50+ pages) run in the background; you’ll see results when ready.
04Section navigation
Detected sections appear in the left sidebar of the plan viewer.
- Click a section to jump to its page range.
- Filter by trade. Show only Electrical, only Plumbing, etc.
- Color-coded badges. Match the trade colors above.
- Delete misidentified sections. The original PDF is untouched; you’re just removing the section marker.
- Manual section. Add your own if the AI missed something.
05Scale calibration
Before any measurement is meaningful, calibrate the scale.
- Activate the calibration tool (toolbar at top of viewer).
- Click two points on a known dimension. Example: a wall labeled “12 ft” — click each end of the wall.
- Measurement line appears between your two points.
- Enter the real-world distance and unit (12, feet).
- Apply to all pages if the scale is consistent across the plan set (it usually is for a single plan).
- Save.
Now every measurement you take on this plan is accurate.
06Markups, measurements, and pricebook links
Once calibrated, the markup tools (linear measurement, area, count, rectangle, callout) become available. Markups can link to pricebook items so quantities flow into a draft bid automatically.
The measurement and markup details are still being built out and will get their own dedicated guide once the v1 feature set is complete. For now: upload your plans, let the AI organize them, calibrate the scale, and you’re set up for what’s coming.
That’s plans and takeoff. Next category: Sub-Bid Requests for the GC-to-sub workflow.