Draw it, size it, export it
Start from a floor plan in the browser: devices, circuits, a panel schedule, a single-line diagram and a calculated bill of materials.
Open demo See pricingThis guide covers what these tools do, where they stop, how vendors charge, and how to test one in thirty minutes. It is written by the GorkyCAD team, so the last section is deliberately blunt about our own product.
What estimating software actually does
An estimating package performs four jobs.
- Structures the quantities. A bill of materials with items, units, waste allowances and assemblies, so that 26 double sockets are one line rather than 26 mental notes.
- Applies unit costs. Material prices from a price list or supplier file; labour from a library or your own historic rates.
- Adds the indirect costs. Preliminaries, supervision, access equipment, testing and commissioning, contingency, overhead and margin — in an order that can be audited later.
- Produces a document you can defend. A priced estimate, a bid summary, an assumptions page and an export your accountant can read.
The difference from a spreadsheet is not arithmetic: the tool remembers why a number changed, and can prove it when the variation claim arrives.
Estimating, takeoff and design are three different jobs
Vendors blur these categories because blurring sells bundles. The three disciplines fail in different ways, and confusing them is the most common reason a contractor concludes that “the software was wrong”.
| Discipline | Question it answers | Typical input | Main output | Typical failure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design | What is the system? | Brief, floor plan, standards | Drawings, single-line diagram, panel schedule, calculations | Drawings issued with no cost or buildability check |
| Takeoff | How much material? | PDF or DWG plans, specifications, schedules | Counts, measured lengths, device list | Scale or symbol legend misread |
| Estimating | What does it cost, and at what risk? | Quantities, labour units, supplier quotes | Priced estimate, bid summary, assumptions | Quantities treated as facts instead of estimates |
In a two-person firm all three happen in one afternoon, which is why the boundaries must be explicit. If the takeoff is wrong by eight percent, no estimating engine rescues the bid.
Pricing models: compare three years, not one month
Vendors in this market charge in at least four ways, and the headline number is rarely the number you pay.
| Model | How it is charged | Fits | Ask before signing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perpetual desktop licence | One-off per seat, paid upgrades | Stable single-office teams | Upgrade path, OS support, licence transfer |
| Per-seat subscription | Monthly or annual per named user | Growing teams, remote staff | Viewer seats, module add-ons, export limits |
| Usage or per-project credits | Per estimate, per revision or per credit pack | Occasional bidders | Whether revisions burn credits |
| Bundled with design software | Included in a CAD subscription | Firms that design and price in one tool | Depth of the estimating module, data export |
Ask for a three-year total cost of ownership: add training, migration, a second seat, and the export module that is always “extra”. GorkyCAD Pro publishes its plans openly on the pricing page rather than quoting per bid.
A 30-minute demo script that exposes weak tools
Never evaluate on the vendor’s showcase project. Bring one messy real job with two revisions, and run this sequence against the clock.
- Minutes 0–4. Import the plan. Watch whether the scale is detected or must be set manually, and whether the tool says which.
- Minutes 4–10. Take off one room completely: sockets, switches, lighting points, one dedicated circuit. Count the clicks.
- Minutes 10–15. Change one quantity and one cable length. Does the bill of materials update, and does the estimate follow?
- Minutes 15–20. Open the labour units. Can you see the source, edit a unit, and copy a library item into your own company rates?
- Minutes 20–25. Print the estimate. Does the assumptions page list waste factors, exclusions and the date of the price list?
- Minutes 25–30. Export to XLSX and re-open it. Do the numbers survive as values and formulas, or is it a picture of a table?
Fail conditions: no keyboard access, PDF-only export, re-entering everything on revision, or nobody who can explain the labour units.
Test it on your own drawing. Open the GorkyCAD Pro demo in a browser and import a plan — no installation, no card.
Where estimates lose accuracy
Software multiplies whatever you feed it. The usual suspects in electrical work:
- Labour units that were never validated. A library unit is a national average; your crews and your access are not. Reconcile after every job or the error compounds.
- Waste and pack sizes. Ten percent waste on 240 m of cable is 264 m, but drums hold 100 m, so you buy 300 m. Round to purchasable units.
- Access and preliminaries. Scaffolding, lifts, out-of-hours working and permits are underestimated because they are not “electrical” and nobody owns them.
- Escalation and scope gaps. A bid priced today and installed in nine months carries price risk, and “builder to provide containment” has cost many contractors a month of margin.
The honest test of any tool is whether it forces those items into the document where a reviewer can argue with them.
Browser-based or desktop?
Desktop packages still win on very large drawing sets, deep manufacturer libraries, offline site work and complex DWG editing. They also bring installs, licence servers and files that live on one laptop.
Browser tools win on access: the same project from the office, the site cabin and a phone; no installs; one version for everyone. Their limits are real — no working offline, browser performance on enormous PDFs, and data that lives with the vendor unless you export regularly.
For a small contracting business the practical answer is often a browser tool for takeoff, design and the first-pass estimate, plus a specialist package for the final bid when your own labour-unit library is the competitive asset. The counting workflow is covered in electrical takeoff software, the design side in house wiring plan software.
What GorkyCAD Pro does, and what it does not
GorkyCAD Pro is a browser CAD environment for electrical work. You import a floor plan (PDF, image or a scanned technical-inventory drawing), place sockets, luminaires, switches and boards, draw the single-line diagram and panel schedule, and let the tool run load, short-circuit, voltage-drop and cable-sizing calculations. From the same model it produces a specification, a bill of materials and a priced estimate, exported as PDF, DXF, XLSX or IFC. Forty-one automated rules check the drawing, and an AI assistant helps with repetitive drafting.
What it does not do, stated plainly:
- No PLC or control-circuit design. There is no ladder logic, no I/O scheduling for automation, no control-schematic editor. If your work is machine control or process automation, this is not that tool.
- No offline mode. It is a web application; a site with no connectivity cannot use it.
- Limited DWG round-trip. DWG and DXF are supported for practical exchange, not for lossless editing of complex third-party blocks and annotative styles. Expect clean-up after import.
- A smaller library than established desktop packages. Symbols, title blocks and manufacturer data cover common residential and light-commercial work; niche industrial kit may need to be added manually.
- Checks are not certification. The 41 rules catch inconsistencies and common mistakes. They do not certify a design to NEC, IEC, BS 7671 or any other code, and they do not replace review by a licensed engineer.
- Estimates are only as good as your rates. We supply structure, quantities and arithmetic — not your labour productivity.
If you want the checks in detail, the documentation lists them one by one.
Red flags in a sales demo
- A demo that never touches a real, imperfect drawing.
- “Accuracy within one percent” as a contractual claim.
- No way to export your own data in a usable format.
- Labour-unit libraries you cannot inspect or override.
- Per-seat charges for people who only need to read an estimate.
- No revision history, so nobody can tell who changed a quantity, or when.
Ready to run this on your project?
Import a plan, run the calculations and export a checked PDF set. Free demo, no installation, no card.
Open demo See pricingFrequently asked questions
Does estimating software replace an estimator?
No. It replaces the spreadsheet, the re-typing and the arithmetic. Judgement about labour productivity, risk and bid strategy remains human — and in most companies that judgement is the competitive advantage.
Can it price a job directly from a PDF plan?
It can extract quantities when the plan is legible and the symbol legend is consistent. Scanned plans usually need a person to confirm counts. Treat the first pass as a draft a human signs off, not an automatic bid.
Is cloud estimating safe for client drawings?
Ask where the data is stored, whether it is encrypted at rest, who can access it, and how you get it back if you leave. Export rights matter more than marketing badges.
Do I need country-specific standards built in?
It helps for cable sizing, voltage-drop limits and protective-device selection, because those rules differ between NEC, IEC and national wiring regulations. Whatever the tool does, verify assumptions against the current edition of the code that applies to your project. This article is not legal or code advice.
How accurate can a software estimate be?
Accuracy comes from calibrated labour units and honest waste factors, not from the software. A firm that reconciles estimated versus actual hours after each job can reach a few percent on repetitive work; a firm that never reconciles will drift regardless of the tool.
Can I use it for a single small job?
Yes — and that is a reasonable way to evaluate it. Run one real project end to end, compare the estimate with what the job cost, then decide about an annual plan. See plans and limits.
Ready to price your next job from a real plan? Start the free demo, then compare plans on pricing and browse the blog for the rest of the workflow.
Sources
- NECA — electrical contracting resources, including labour-unit manuals: https://www.necanet.org/
- Gordian (RSMeans) — construction cost data and estimating references: https://www.gordian.com/
- NFPA 70, National Electrical Code: https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-70-standard-development/70
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — electricians, occupational outlook: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electricians.htm