Frequently asked questions.

Great estimation software requires two things that rarely come together: world-class technical talent and deep domain expertise. Our US-based software engineering team has shipped category-defining products at Amazon, Shell, Google, and Goldman Sachs. For the industry expertise, we assembled an advisory board of senior estimators and fabrication leaders with decades of experience who guide our product roadmap. Well-funded by 8VC and top investors, we're building the takeoff platform industrial contractors deserve.

AI takeoff is software that automatically reads and extracts information from your ISOs. Manual takeoffs are notoriously labor intensive, and large ISO packets can take days, if not weeks, to run. With Purplefish, you're able to condense that into minutes. Purplefish's proprietary document engine combines multiple computer vision models and LLMs running in parallel to triangulate the most accurate answer, regardless of document type or format.

Yes. Purplefish extracts the bill of materials (BOM) directly from any piping ISO with near perfect accuracy. You simply upload your isometric drawings, review the information that Purplefish extracted, and export the rolled-up bill of materials into Excel. The full roll-up covers fittings, valves, flanges, pipe runs, sizes, quantities, and key title block information.

Purplefish's document engine averages 99.9% accuracy for extracting the BOM from ISOs, across tens of thousands of pages processed. We'll audit your packet for free to demonstrate our accuracy on your own drawings.

It's one thing to be accurate on a clean, well-structured PDF. It's another thing to achieve that accuracy on BOMs that are handwritten, overly scanned, full of PDF layers or drawings that have multiple BOMs on a page, conflicting columns or overlapping text. Purplefish is built for exactly these cases, and we'll prove it on your ugliest packet.

On average, Purplefish processes about 500 pages of ISOs in 30 minutes. The largest packet we've processed was 2200 pages, and that took just over an hour. We're aware that large packets can take estimators days, if not weeks, to complete. By cutting that down to minutes, you can save that time to focus on more strategic tasks and decisions. If you want to spot check key items, our review interface makes it fast.

Yes. Purplefish extracts weld counts, joint types, and other labor-driving details directly from your ISOs, with every count traceable back to the source drawing. You get total weld counts and weld inches bucketed by weld type, size, material spec, grade, and schedule. We output the counts, your estimators apply their own labor factors and export to Excel.

We read the drawing. Tools that count welds solely off the BOM will miss a lot. Purplefish interprets the isometric directly, then cross-checks it against the BOM, flagging inconsistencies and potential engineering errors for your estimator to validate. That's the difference between a weld count you can defend and one you have to redo.

Yes. Our Soft Craft module is built specifically for industrial coating, painting, and insulation contractors. Instead of weld counts and material lines, you get a surface area takeoff calculated from the ISOs, broken down by coating spec or insulation spec and thickness, so your takeoff maps directly to how you estimate and quote. Same upload, same traceability back to the source drawing, different view.

Purplefish is built with enterprise-grade security by US-based engineers with experience building secure, production-grade systems at Google and Amazon. All of your data is stored and processed securely in the United States, and everything is encrypted, both in transit and at rest. Each customer's data is fully isolated, so drawings are never accessible to other customers.