Countfire Reviews - Page 2

Automatically counting multiple drawings at the same timeAbility to identify any issues/errorsConstantly adding new features

So far we have had no issues wit the software. The only very minor issue was not receiving a notification of duplicate symbols on a set of drawings but still not really an issue

Thanks Jake - really appreciate you leaving this review! Countfire's auto-counting feature is built on our own proprietary image recognition algorithm, this allows the software to automatically recognise selected symbols/text across all the drawings within that discipline. That's spot on - finding errors is easy! You can hide your counted symbols allowing you to visually check your work in the software. Once...

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Countfire has been developed specifically for take off from PDF drawings. The ease of take from PDF drawings and the export in Excel. The ability to create zones that match the tender breakdown/CSA. The exceptional level and speed of support is second to none.

The estimating package need a lot of work to be used by major M&E companies. The left hand margin and contents are fixed. This needs to be flexible to move and change fonts etc. Can be slow for take with the background on. (Sometimes the background need to stay)

Best counting and measuring software on the market by far – love it! Thanks Merv. You're spot on – Countfire has been designed by Estimators for Estimators with loads of features to help improve the speed and accuracy of your takeoffs. Our support is something we're really proud of. From online training sessions to our in-app live chat, we do our best to make sure all of our users get the most out of the software. Thanks for the feedback on the Estimating side of the software. We've recently added the ability to add prelims to your estimates and produce custom reports to suit your requirements. If you'd like to take a look, just let us know and we can set up a quick video call.

CountFire being a cloud based service gets you up and running quickly. CountFire Sales is there to get you started and introduce you to Technical Assistance and Training. The On-Line Help function is integral to the CountFire Platform allowing you to be able to function seamlessly as you work on projects. I can count drawing elements or make extremely accurate measurements in one tenth of the time I did manually without the cost of drawing reproduction. The Final Reports are perfectly formatted in MSExcel and ready for Bill of Material development.

I am still looking for a Con. I thought that since CountFire is in Great Britain that communications might be hampered by five, (5) time zones, but this was not the case. CountFire was there 24X7 to solve my self-inflicted start-up issues.

The takeoff software allows the user to quickly takeoff any project. The symbol counting tool is impressive and in the future when the project is in a later build most estimators will use this software.

The technology, while impressive hasn't reached perfection yet. I believe in years to come this will no longer be a problem. An example of this is the symbol counting software which doesn't accurately take off every symbol. To counteract this Countfire allows you to take as many snippets of the symbol as you want. Hopefully in the near future this will no longer be an issue.

Thanks for the review Caelan, glad you have been impressed with Countfire! Absolutely – it's great you have been able to complete your takeoffs quicker. We acknowledge there's always room for improvement – our product team work in two week cycles to release hundreds of platform enhancements a year. Countfire finds matches based on your selections. Occasionally, depending how the drawing has been created, symbols can be drawn differently so they don't automatically match with your first selection. To count these different symbols, just make additional selections under the same symbol heading. Really welcome feedback from our users. To submit a feature request click on the orange button in the bottom right-hand corner of the app and choose "Give Feedback".

Its a lot more intelligent than other software's

The cost is slightly higher than we would like to pay.

Countfire is a dream to use. It does everything I wanted when I imagined a program to help automate the takeoff process, and they are still improving and adding more. The ability to hide the background and define zones are two features that make complicated plans go so much quicker. Out of the hundreds of projects we've completed already, very few have issues that hinder the programs functionality. But when something like that does pop up, there is always somebody to respond quickly and take a look. They always are happy to hear customer feedback and take suggestions. I can't say enough good about the team behind this software, they are going to change the industry. I can't believe a couple of months ago in 2021 I was still printing drawings and using a yellow highlighter.

What I like least about the software is the output excel file is a bit complicated compared to what we are used to. I only count devices of one discipline at a time, there is really no reason for more than one sheet. After I download the take off from countfire I always delete about half the rows / columns and transpose the x and y.

Intuitive, accurate, superb customer support, simple to use, fully formatted downloadable reports.

Hard to say what I like the least.............. That it wasn't available 30 years ago. :-)

Thanks for your great review Andrew! It's great to hear that you find Countfire intuitive and simple to use. It would have been great to be around 30 years ago so we could have been helping estimators increase their speed and accuracy for longer – if only we had a time machine 😄 You're right – we are confident that Countfire will help estimators speed up their takeoff and estimating process. We also want our users to get the most out of the software, so we offer free full online training and live support to all of our users – from free trial through to our legacy customers, as we are consistently releasing new features.

Easy & straightforward to use. Great user interface. Reliable automated counting (if drawings are half decent!)

Copying symbol selection over to new drawings & also reviewing later revisions of drawings does not always work as it should with no real explanation as to why apart from it being something related to the drawing

Thanks Kelly - appreciate you leaving this review! Really glad to hear you're getting on with Countfire so well. You're correct, copying symbols doesn't always work. Occasionally the revised drawings have been created slightly differently - there are usually 2 reasons why Countfire will not automatically find matches: 1 - The drawings have been converted to an image, removing the drawing layers - which means the symbols are not selectable 2 - When the original drawing was revised the symbols have been drawn differently or changed (i.e. the make-up of the symbols has different - for example the shape of a light fitting has changed).

Without the software we wouldn't be able to deliver the speed of work that we are able to do now

Sometimes the symbols don't import quite correctly, also doesn't like complex symbols exported from Autocad

Thanks so much Craig. Thrilled to hear Countfire has sped up what you're able to deliver! With symbols not importing correctly, that's related to the information contained within PDFs and how it's made ready to work on within Countfire. This is always a little tricky as PDFs can (and do!) contain virtually anything, however, we recently completed a major overhaul of this system and the results are...

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It's easy to use, functions really well and they've thought of (almost!) everything! It's really great that it puts all the information into a nice, neat Excel spreadsheet so I can easily add my costings and work out my prices.

I'm only a couple of months into using countfire but there's nothing I don't like about it. I have made a couple of suggestions for features - I need to be able to switch from imperial to metric measurements at will being the main one. Autosave another. I think that these have been taken on board.

Ability to quickly turn around project quantities and transfer onto Excel for all to use and review.

difficulties using the product is when the drawing images are uploaded but each symbol has minor alterations. To the naked eye can't be picked up but the software will, therefore some symbols need multiple take offs done for same image.

Wow, what a great review - thanks Ben! It's great to hear that you're able to quickly turn around your projects. You're spot on – sometimes symbols can look the same on your drawings but, when the drawings have been created, they have been drawn slightly differently. All you need to do to count all these symbols is make an additional selection. Countfire will then look for your selections across all of your drawings in the discipline. If you do run into this, it's always worth popping our support team a message, they'll usually have some tips to help you get more matches from fewer selections.

The product itself is very easy to use and get used to. I can take drawings off in whatever way I need, and even go back to edit take offs if needs be with no hassle.

One feature I would like to see added to countfire is the ability to copy a Group/Measure/Count. Sometimes on one drawing I could have multiple types of spurs for example, and it would be nice to be able to copy one line item, and edit part of the reference to save typing out the whole thing.

I love the customer support and the time it saves me.

There are some features that are unavailable right now, but they are constantly making improvements. I actually just had something I voted for added to the functionality of the program.

Awesome review – thanks Olivia! We're super proud of our support – we have a live chat to answer any questions you have and offer free online training to make sure you're getting the most out of the software. Great to hear you're able to save time and produce easily-readable outputs. You're spot on – our technical team are constantly working to release hundreds of platform enhancements every year to make Countfire even better. We encourage our users to 'Give feedback' on the orange button at the bottom right hand corner of Countfire.

I have found that even though it is mainly for the electrical trade i have adapted it with the help of the Countfire Team to mechanical use

Nothing. It has suited all my needs and assists in my day to day works

Thanks so much for your kind review Mark. Yes, although it's not specifically designed for the mechanical trade, Countfire is flexible and you can adapt it to your way of working. It's great you've found using Countfire really helpful and more accurate than printing and marking drawings. I agree, it's definitely faster too as you don't have to worry about adding up your measurements or losing your place if you're interrupted - Countfire keeps a track of all that for you. Once you've finished your takeoff you also get a set of marked up drawings and a spreadsheet splitting out your quantities.

You can complete take offs with covering 1 item multiple times in 1 symbol or you can manually count them off using the measure tool. You can overlap drawings, this is great when you have multiple drawings for 1 floor for example

Sometimes the dropbox link isnt sent o my email once processing my take off.

Thanks for the amazing review Emma! We have a bunch of features to help you takeoff your drawings super quickly and accurately including our automatic counting tools and our measure tools. Great to hear you're finding the Floor plan feature helpful – it allows you to stitch your drawings together to see the whole layout in a single view. There are a few different ways to access your takeoff outputs. As well as Dropbox and OneDrive integrations, you can also download them directly from the app. If you ever have an issue accessing your outputs, just send us a message on our in-app live chat at the orange button in the bottom right hand corner of Countfire – our support team will be happy to help get it sorted for you.

Count fires auto count across multiple drawing has sped up the take off procedure, enabling us to spend more time estimating and putting costs to things than counting.

Measure facility on things such as containment drawing. Its not a dislike but similar to other software (plan swift)

Thanks for the amazing review Billy! It's awesome to hear how auto counting symbols across multiple drawings is speeding up your takeoff process, giving you extra time to focus on estimating and costing. We have a feature request for "Improvements to measuring containment", you can add your vote by clicking 'Give feedback' on the orange button at the bottom right corner of Countfire.

The software is easy to use and if in doubt the speed of assistance is almost immediate. The ease to choose symbols which then copies across to all drawings in that section makes it so much faster.

Not having used any other software for take offs in the past doesn't give me much to say what features the software lacks or is missing, anything we do use is a bonus and with new features constantly updating I cant fault it.

Thanks Adam! Really glad you're getting on well with the software and find it easy to use - our support response times are also something we're super proud of! In terms of not having used any other takeoff software I can understand it can be tricky to see what features you'd find useful. With that in mind, we're always happy to receive feedback from our customers and you can view our feature requests by clicking on the orange button in-app and selecting 'Give feedback'! You're right, we are constantly updating and adding new features. To keep up to date with what we're doing you can read our change logs here https://feedback.countfire.com/changelog

Pure ease of use, does exactly what i need it to do and outputs easily legible tables.

Nothing, does exactly what i need with a good price!

Does what it says on the tin – love it! Thanks Chris. Awesome that you're finding Countfire easy to use and it does exactly what you need. Spot on – Countfire produces a consistent set of outputs for every project. Great to hear that you don't have any cons! If you do ever have any feedback on features you'd like to see, we'd love to hear from you – just use the orange button in the bottom right hand corner of the app.

Very efficient, software very easy to use, great support team, would not want to be without it.

Having correct symbols for design purposes, this is in the pipeline.

Take off software is definitely the stand out area of the software compared to others on the market which require you to manually take off items. This allows you to instantly highlight which then follows through to other pages in the same discipline. Cutting the time to do take offs dramatically

The kits can take some time to build up when you first start using the software which can be a bit tedious especially if you are used to working on spreadsheets etc. but if you bear with it it does get much easier and quicker to use.

Great review Katherine - thanks! It's great you've been able to cut the time to complete your takeoffs! You're spot on, when you make a selection Countfire will automatically look for matches across all drawings in your discipline, which significantly speeds up the takeoff process. Also, glad to hear you've had a really good experience with the software and the customer service you've received. I...

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Easy to use, fast, useful for auto counting from certain revised drawings such as lighting. Demarcation of drawings is a good feature.

There is no 'back' button to help you correct mistakes - you have to rely on not saving changes which is not ideal. Recognition of different orientation of symbols is limited to 90 degrees only - expanding this would be useful. Typical small power symbol auto count can be time consuming because of how symbols are recognised by the system, this makes the auto count process unreliable particularly across multiple drawings - a manual count often becomes the best option which defeats the object.

The ability to select 1 symbol and count fire counts all of them.

Either the loading time or the fact that sometimes it messes up the background and believes it is not background. Though I understand this is probably due to the drawings rather than countfire.

Many thanks for your review Brody. Absolutely – when selecting your symbols Countfire searches for matches across all drawings in your discipline. When backgrounds aren't automatically hidden we have a number of options you can use by clicking the down arrow next to the background button. This allows you to: Customise – select parts of the drawing to hide with the default settings of your background. Restore defaults – return to Countfire's standard background settings. Restart – removes all background settings and allows you to start from scratch.

As a Team, we find this tool very useful collectively as we can help each other, assist in various ways and find the output of the take off/marked up drawings symbol checks very useful.

In some areas, perhaps an ability to 'copy & paste' information, words etc could be useful.