ArcSite

Can it make your construction and design work easier?

In today’s fast paced digital world, especially in construction, architecture, and field sales, the use of paper and pencil is becoming obsolete. If you’re a contractor, designer, or field inspector, you know how time consuming it is to create drawings on site, take measurements, and then return to the office to prepare estimates. ArcSite is one such application designed specifically for these professionals.

This is a mobile CAD (Computer Aided Design) tool that turns your Android phone or tablet into a powerful drafting station. Its primary function is to help you create fast, and most importantly, accurate, floor plans, site plans, and takeoffs right on site. This app not only saves you time but also makes you appear more professional in front of your clients.

How to Create Professional Floor Plans on Your Mobile?

ArcSite’s most fundamental and important feature is its intuitive CAD drawing interface. Using software like AutoCAD on a desktop computer requires specialized training, but it is easy to use. You can stand on the site and draw straight lines, curves, and shapes with your fingers or a stylus. The app allows you to enter precise dimensions so your floor plans are drawn to scale.

For example, if you’re measuring a room, you can immediately map the length of its walls, the size of its doors, and the placement of its windows onto your digital plan. Its snap to grid and auto dimensioning features ensure that your lines are straight and your measurements are accurate.

This feature is also great for sales professionals who need to visit a client’s home to create a kitchen remodel or flooring layout right away. Unlike a paper drawing, this digital plan is clean, professional, and easily editable.

The ability to draw on site photos and Blueprints

This is the feature of it that distinguishes it from similar design apps. Like you’re renovating an old building and don’t have a blueprint, or you’re a landscape designer designing the area outside a client’s home. ArcSite allows you to take a photo of the site with your phone’s camera and import that photo as a background onto your drawing canvas. Then, you can draw over that photo.

You can import a satellite image (like from Google Maps) and design a property boundary, fencing, or irrigation system. If you already have a PDF blueprint, you can import it and mark up changes, write notes, or add new elements.

This photo markup feature greatly reduces the chance of errors, as you’re working within a real world context. This also gives your client a better understanding of what you’re changing.

Automatic Material Takeoffs: Save Time and Reduce Mistakes

One of the most difficult stages of construction and contracting is takeoff or quantity surveying calculating how much material (e.g., how many square feet of tiles, how long wiring, or how much paint) a project will require. Here you automates this entire process.

When you create a floor plan in the app and select products such as Flooring or Wall Paint, the app automatically measures the area or length. You can also add your own custom products for example, the price of a specific brand of tile. As soon as you complete the drawing, ArcSite immediately tells you how many square feet of material you need.

This not only saves you hours of manual calculations but also eliminates the risk of human errors. This ensures you won’t order too much or too little material, keeping your project costs under control.

Create Professional Proposals for Clients Right on the Spot

For sales professionals and contractors, closing sales is paramount. Often, after a site visit, a client says, Well, why not email me a quote? This is time consuming and can reduce client interest. This App offers a quick solution to this problem. Because you’ve already created the material takeoffs while creating the drawing, you can enter pricing for those materials right within the app.

Once the drawing is complete, you can click Generate Proposal. ArcSite combines your drawings, takeoffs, and dimensions to create a professional PDF proposal. You can also include your company logo, terms and conditions, and other details in this proposal.

You can email this proposal to foreign clients, or show it to them on your tablet. This feature makes you appear more professional and efficient, which increases client trust and increases the chances of closing a sale.

How can you improve your work with the Custom Shapes Library?

Every industry has its own specific needs. An electrician needs symbols for switches and outlets, while a plumber needs symbols for pipes and sinks. ArcSite has an extensive library of over 1,500 pre made symbols. But its real benefit is that you can create and save custom shapes tailored to your needs. If you’re a fencing contractor, you can save specific gates or fence panels as a custom shape.

This means you don’t have to redraw the same thing the next time you create a drawing; You simply pull the shape from the library and drag and drop it onto your plan.

This not only significantly speeds up your drawing speed, but also ensures that the symbols and elements used across all your projects are standardized. This makes your plans look clearer and more professional.

Share Projects in Real-Time with Your Team

Team collaboration is crucial in construction projects. Continuous communication is essential between the field team installers and the office team project managers, designers. ArcSite is a cloud based platform. This means that any drawing you create on your tablet is synced to the cloud. Your office team can view that drawing immediately on their computers.

If the designer in the office makes a change, the field team sees it immediately on their devices. This bridges the communication gap and prevents misunderstandings. You can also give your clients view only access so they can see the project’s progress. This real time collaboration ensures the entire team is on the same page, which is crucial to project success.

How to Take On-Site Signatures (eSigns) and Payments from Clients?

This feature is designed to streamline the sales process. You create a drawing on-site, take a takeoff, and present a professional proposal to the client. If the client agrees to your proposal, you don’t need separate documentation to get the contract signed. With ArcSite’s eSign feature, the client can digitally sign on your tablet.

This signature is legally confirmed (legally binding) and secured with your proposal. Taking this a step further, ArcSite now supports Payments. This means you can collect a deposit or down payment from your client on site via credit card immediately after the proposal is signed.

This feature reduces the sales cycle from hours or days to just minutes, improving your cash flow and helping you get projects started immediately.

How to Export Your Drawings to AutoCAD or PDF

The work you do in ArcSite isn’t limited to just that app. Often, you need to share your plans with other professionals, such as architects or structural engineers, who may use software like AutoCAD or Revit on their desktop. ArcSite gives you complete freedom to export your drawings in industry-standard formats. You can save your plans as PDF or PNG files for easy printing or emailing. Additionally, you can export your plans as DXF or DWG files.

These are the file formats used in AutoCAD and other CAD programs. The advantage is that you can quickly create a preliminary drawing on-site from your mobile device and send it to the office, where the designer can open it in AutoCAD and do the detailed work. This feature makes ArcSite an important part of your current workflow.

Is it the right choice for your business?

It’s a complete business solution for contractors, sales teams, and designers. If your job involves visiting sites to take measurements, create maps, and provide clients with instant estimates, this application can completely transform your workflow. It takes you away from the hassle of paperwork and into a digital, professional, and incredibly fast workflow. Automatic material takeoffs save you time and money, while on-site proposals, eSignatures, and payment advice give you a clear advantage over your competitors.

Yes, it’s a subscription based tool, but if you consider its benefits like increased sales, reduced errors, and time savings the cost is well worth it. If you’re still using pen and paper and want to take your business to the next level, ArcSite could be a game changer. It gives you the power to complete everything from drawing a project to collecting payments while still in the field.