Purple Hammer

Purple Hammer is native Mac and Windows construction takeoff and estimating software built around one idea: the drawing and the estimate should update together.

Every geometric markup is also a measurement and a live worksheet row. As users measure lengths, areas, perimeters, counts, volumes or wall quantities, Purple Hammer can pull rates from cost databases, calculate line totals and update the whole estimate instantly. There is no need to export quantities to Excel and manually stitch them back into a pricing model.

Key capabilities:

  • PDF markup, measurement and scale calibration
  • Metric and imperial quantities
  • Extremely fast (120 FPS pan & zoom ; ~1 second to open a large set ; ~2 seconds auto-align)
  • Live estimating worksheets with Excel compatibility and extra estimating syntax
  • Flexible cost, assembly, crew, supplier and waste-factor via lookup databases
  • Power Syntax for project-wide, or specific meta scopes such as floor, building or discipline totals
  • Magic Measure (one-click measure)
  • Magic Count (find and counts repeated symbols by visual examples)
  • Vector, grid and raster-edge snapping
  • Watched-folder document control with rename-safe and move-safe tracking
  • Version history that keeps each drawing revision with its own takeoff
  • Automatic revision alignment, overlay and blink comparison
  • Multiple alignment candidates for drawings where different regions have moved
  • Marked-up PDF, Excel, PNG and comparison GIF export
  • Open MCP access for user-controlled AI workflows

  Purple Hammer’s document control works with the folders teams already use, without importing
  managed sets or manually slip-sheeting revisions. When a revised drawing arrives, users can
  align it with the previous version, see what was added, moved or removed, and re-measure
  only the difference. The live estimate updates from those changes.

  The native viewer is designed for large construction sets, targeting 120 FPS pan and zoom
  and keeping project performance focused on the drawings currently in use. Purple Hammer runs
  as a desktop application on macOS and Windows and includes a 30-day free trial.

Overview

ShapeDo Ltd is a venture-backed construction technology company founded in 2014, with offices in Israel and London. It makes two products: ShapeDo, a collaborative design change management platform, and Purple Hammer, a desktop application for construction PDF and spreadsheet operations covering viewing, markup, measurement, comparison, takeoff and estimating.

Both are built on the company's drawing alignment and comparison engine, which can take two revisions of a construction drawing and make every addition, removal and alteration visible.

ShapeDo - Design Change Management

Construction projects run on drawings that change constantly, and information about those changes ends up scattered across PDF tools, spreadsheets, email and document platforms. Teams can usually find the latest drawing; what they struggle to know is exactly what changed since the last revision, who needs to review it, and what it does to quantities, cost and programme.

ShapeDo is the project-level, collaborative platform for keeping that under control. Its capabilities include:

• Automatic comparison of drawing revisions, highlighting exactly what was added, removed or altered between versions
• Structured review workflows that route each change to the people responsible for assessing it, with assigned actions tracked to closure
• Design issue logging and RFI management connected directly to the drawings in question
• A complete, auditable history of drawing versions, reviews and decisions across the life of the project
• Dashboards and records showing outstanding reviews and unresolved issues at project level

Across the Project Lifecycle

ShapeDo is used throughout a project. During tendering and preconstruction, teams use it to identify design movement that affects scope, quantities or price. During delivery, design managers, project managers, commercial teams and consultants use it to coordinate reviews and keep change under control.

At the back end of a job, its records support change substantiation, final-account negotiations, claims analysis and dispute resolution, because the project can show precisely what changed, when, why and by whom.

Uncaught design changes are among the most common causes of contractor losses, and the reason is structural rather than careless: a revision can alter scope without anyone flagging it, and the cost only surfaces when the work is built. ShapeDo's purpose is to make sure no change goes unseen.

Purple Hammer - Desktop PDF and Estimating

Purple Hammer is a single-user desktop product for macOS and Windows, built for the construction industry's daily PDF and spreadsheet operations: viewing, marking up, measuring, comparing and organising drawing sets, and pricing what gets measured.

It suits anyone who spends their working day in construction PDFs, including site engineers and project managers, and goes deepest for estimators, quantity surveyors, contractors and specialist subcontractors - adding live estimating spreadsheets so measurement and pricing happen in one native application instead of the usual split between a PDF tool and Excel.

Connected Takeoff and Estimate

Measurements - lengths, areas, perimeters and counts - flow directly into built-in worksheets, where formulas, rates and cost databases turn quantities into a priced estimate. Because takeoff and estimate stay connected, a change in one updates the other.

When a revised drawing is issued, Purple Hammer aligns it with the previous version, shows the changed scope, keeps existing measurements intact, and lets the user re-measure and re-price only what changed rather than starting the takeoff again. On a large tender with several revision cycles, that difference compounds into days of recovered estimating time.

Performance

The application is engineered for speed on real-world drawing sets:

• A several-hundred-sheet PDF set opens in roughly a second
• Automatic alignment and comparison of two revisions typically completes in one to two seconds
• Pan and zoom run at 120 frames per second

Performance matters more here than it might in other software categories, because estimators work against bid deadlines and a tool that stalls on a large set simply gets abandoned.

Features

• Markup and annotation
• Calibrated measurement
• Automatic drawing alignment
• Overlays and blink comparison
• Area and perimeter takeoff
• Repeated-symbol counting
• Drawing version history
• Live estimating worksheets with formulas
• Export of marked-up drawings and spreadsheet data

Who Uses It

General and main contractors, specialist subcontractors, estimators, quantity surveyors, design managers, commercial managers, consultants, project controls teams and construction claims professionals across the AEC industry.

Use Cases

• Identifying scope movement between drawing revisions during tender
• Routing design changes to the right reviewers and tracking them to closure
• Producing measured takeoffs and priced estimates in a single application
• Re-pricing only the changed scope when revisions land mid-tender
• Substantiating variations and supporting final-account negotiation
• Assembling evidence for claims and dispute resolution

The Two Products in One Line Each

ShapeDo helps project teams see, review and manage design changes collaboratively, and prove what changed later.

Purple Hammer is a fast construction PDF and spreadsheet tool for viewing, markup, measurement and comparison, with estimating built in, so users re-price only what changed when revisions land.