Patent ID: 7587061

Claim:
A method of determining a count of construction accessories and estimating wire and pipe run requirements and costs appearing on building construction drawings in symbolic form comprising: using a computer to perform the following steps of: (a) entering the construction drawings in electronic format into a software program having the capacity to recognize symbols on said drawings; (b) defining selected symbols appearing in the construction drawings for which it is desired to obtain a count of by abstracting a portion of the drawing containing such symbols and displaying such portion on a monitor to allow the symbols to be rationalized when necessary by digitally removing extraneous portions of the drawing from the abstraction of the symbols displayed on the monitor; (c) entering the rationalized symbols into memory and thereby verifying said symbols; (d) electronically scanning the entire drawing noting each match or occurrence of a symbol conforming to a verified symbol and adding to a running tally of such symbols noted; and (e) at completion of electronic scanning providing a count of the matches of symbols in the drawing, and measuring distances between any two points or objects on said drawing in both vertical and horizontal dimensions to obtain an estimate of wire and pipe run requirements and costs.