How this page was prepared: CyanBuild publishes this page and is one of the products discussed. The product facts below come from the linked vendor pages, each checked on October 29, 2026. No controlled, independent benchmark of these products was run for this page. The order is a reading order, not an accuracy or speed ranking, and published prices change — verify the current terms before you buy.
What an automated door pass gives you
A detector reads a plan page and reports the positions of shapes that match what it was trained to recognise. That is a genuinely useful first pass: finding 240 door symbols on a 30-sheet set by eye is a bad use of an estimator's afternoon. What it does not give you is a take-off. The gap between a detection pass and a priced quantity is where the estimating work actually lives.
There are two separate gaps, and it is worth naming them separately. The first is arithmetic: one physical door produces four different integers depending on which unit you count in. The second is interpretive: several of the values a door take-off needs are not drawn on the floor plan at all.
| Unit | Counted as | Why the unit matters | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening | Each | Seeds hardware sets and installation labour, which are both per opening. | MasterFormat 08 06 10 door schedule; Rutgers Design Standards Manual |
| Leaf | Each leaf, so a pair is 2 | Seeds door slabs and paint, which are per leaf rather than per opening. | Door schedule single-leaf-versus-pair column |
| Frame | One per opening | Frames are dimensioned on the door sheet rather than the plan, and a combination frame splits. | Door schedule frame type, frame material and detail keys |
| Hardware set | One set per opening | A set is assigned to an opening, not to a leaf and not to a type, and it is grouped in the hardware schedule rather than shown on the plan. | MasterFormat 08 06 70 and 08 06 71 hardware schedules |
The four countable units of a door takeoff (checked October 29, 2026). One physical door produces four different integers depending on which unit the take-off line uses. A count with no unit on it is not a quantity. Sources were checked on October 29, 2026.
What the detector establishes, and what you still have to do
The table below is the review checklist. The left column is the task, the second is what an automated pass contributes, the third is what it structurally cannot contribute, and the fourth is the check that closes the gap.
| Task | What an automated pass can establish | What it cannot establish | Your check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Locating door symbols on a floor plan | The position of a symbol that matches a learned shape, and how many such shapes appear on the sheet | That the shape is a door rather than a casement window arc, a furniture symbol or a keynote hexagon, both of which use similar marks | Match each detected mark against the project legend, and check the false-positive classes that share the same geometry |
| Counting openings | A candidate count of matches on the sheet | Whether a match drawn on a reflected ceiling plan or an elevation is a new door or the same door seen again | Reconcile against the door schedule on the tag, and record the exceptions in both directions |
| Reading door tags | Where a tag appears and, when the text is legible, which tag it is | The tag value when the text is below the legibility threshold, which on a scan is most of the time | Read tags from the schedule, and use the tag positions on the plan to locate the openings |
| Establishing leaf count | Nothing, because the difference between one leaf and a pair is a drawing convention rather than a shape | Whether a pair drawn as a single arc is one leaf or two | Take the leaf count from the schedule pair column, not from the plan |
| Fire rating, glazing and handing | Nothing. These live in the schedule and the elevations | Any of the three | Take them from the schedule; the plan symbol carries no rating |
| Rough opening size | The bounding box of a symbol, if one is detected | The frame or opening size, which is a dimensioned value on the door sheet | Take the size from the door schedule and add the manufacturer's rough-opening allowance separately |
| Skipped and duplicated doors | That a candidate count exists at all | Whether an omission is a genuinely absent door or a detection failure | Compare the plan count against the schedule count and investigate every gap |
What an automated door pass can and cannot establish (checked October 29, 2026). Nothing in the published sources measures door-detection accuracy specifically. The closest benchmark figures are for HVAC and plumbing symbols on industrial construction drawings, and for architectural floor-plan symbol classes on real drawings at 150 dpi, and neither is a measurement of door counting. Read what happens on a scanned drawing for those figures and their scope.
A review procedure that fits into a normal day
- Run the pass and get a candidate count. Do not treat it as a result.
- Open the project legend. Match the symbol and tag shapes to your own set before you count anything. This is the step that prevents a plausible but wrong count.
- Reconcile plan against schedule. Match on the tag and record the exceptions both ways: plan openings with no schedule row, and schedule rows with no plan opening.
- Take the derived units from the schedule. Leaf count from the pair column, fire rating from the rating column, handing and glazing from their columns, frame size from the schedule.
- Check the exclusion classes by hand. Demolition doors drawn dashed, doors noted as existing-to-remain or not in contract, overhead and coiling doors, and cabinet and casework doors.
- Reconcile the count back against the plan. Investigate every difference rather than adjusting the schedule to match.
- Carry the unresolved items into the estimate as scope questions, not as silent adjustments to a quantity.
If your plans are scans rather than native PDFs, read what happens on a scanned drawing first — the failure modes there change which checks matter. For the method behind this page, see how to count doors and windows on a floor plan, and for what practitioners report after using these tools, the r/estimators verdict.
What does CyanBuild software cost?
These are CyanBuild’s published software plans as checked on October 6, 2026. Each allowance is for PDF pages per month. You review the quantities; an outsourced takeoff service is a separate purchase.
| Plan | Monthly price | PDF pages / month |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 3 |
| Starter | $29 | 30 |
| Pro | $99 | 120 |
| Enterprise | $299 | 400 |
Paid subscriptions renew according to their terms. A page allowance does not guarantee the completeness of a takeoff, and unused capacity does not turn the subscription into a per-project service. Check current features and terms before choosing a plan.
What else should you check?
- How accurate is AI door takeoff?
- No published figure measures door-detection accuracy specifically, so this page does not quote one. The closest benchmarks are for HVAC and plumbing symbols on industrial construction drawings and for architectural symbol classes on real floor plans at 150 dpi. Both are other tasks: the method is transferable, the numbers are not.
- Why does my door count not match the door schedule?
- The usual causes are doors drawn on reflected ceiling plans or elevations rather than the floor plan, doors tagged in the schedule but absent from the plan, the same door type repeated across several sheets of a unit, and demolition doors drawn dashed for removal. The plan governs instance count and the schedule governs type and properties, so reconcile them rather than choosing one source.
- Can a detector tell a single door from a pair?
- Not reliably. A pair is frequently drawn as a single arc, so the shape on the plan does not carry the leaf count. That value comes from the door schedule's single-leaf-versus-pair column, and the same applies to handing, fire rating and glazing.
- What does the detector actually return?
- A position for each shape that matches what it was trained to recognise, and a count of those matches. Everything downstream — leaf counts, hardware sets, ratings, sizes and the exclusions — comes from the schedules and from your review of the drawing.
- Do I still need to read the legend sheet?
- Yes, and this is the step that saves the most rework. There is no universal door and window plan-symbol legend; the conventions are office standard. A casement window uses an arc too, and keynote marks are hexagonal. If the detector's training set matched a different convention, a legend mismatch shows up as a plausible but wrong count.
Where do the figures and product facts come from?
Sources checked October 29, 2026. Published prices can change; verify the actual terms before purchasing. Worked examples on this page are labeled separately from published product or service facts.
- CyanBuild published plans
Monthly software prices and PDF page allowances. These are product terms, not market averages or outsourced service fees.
- Rutgers University Design Standards Manual — Division 08 Openings
The door schedule fields an estimator reconciles, including single leaf versus pair, frame type, fire rating and hardware group. Checked October 29, 2026.
- Sweets 3-Part Specifications — 08 Openings
The MasterFormat section numbers for the door, window, hardware and glazing schedules. Checked October 29, 2026.
- CSI MasterFormat index — 08 00 00 Openings
An independent cross-check of the Division 08 schedule numbering. Checked October 29, 2026.
- Helonic knowledge base — architectural plan symbols
The door symbol appearances and the single-versus-double arc convention. Checked October 29, 2026.
- S.F. Johnson Consulting — doors and windows cheat page
The door and window schedule field lists and the rough-opening allowance convention. Checked October 29, 2026.
- University of Michigan AEC — DG 2.4 document standards
That floor plans carry walls, doors and windows while excluding card access control and wiring information. Checked October 29, 2026.
- Jamieson, Moreno-Garcia and Elyan — IJDAR 2024 construction drawing detection
The construction-drawing detection figures, their symbol-size dependence and the measured review time. Checked October 29, 2026.
- Real-world floor plan symbol spotting
The architectural floor-plan detection figures on real drawings at 150 dpi, and their per-class results. Checked October 29, 2026.
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