Abarca guide

The basics.

Abarca apps run entirely in your browser. Nothing uploads, nothing installs, and there is no account to make.

Everything you do is saved to this browser, on this machine, the moment you do it. Close the tab and come back tomorrow — it is all still there. That also means your work does not follow you to another computer on its own, so when you want it somewhere else, use Back up to move it.

Both apps carry the same ⚙ menu in the top-right corner — backups, theme, and a link back to this guide.

Markup: sets & sheets.

A set is one project. Inside it are sheets — the individual pages you mark up.

1. Click New set and give it the job name.
2. Drag a PDF onto the window, or use Import PDF. Every page becomes a sheet.
3. Sheets pick up their labels from the title block automatically. Rename any of them by double-clicking the label.

You can import more than one PDF into a set — a new revision, a shop drawing, a specification. They live side by side as separate groups of sheets, which is what makes comparing revisions possible.

Sheet scale.

Set the scale once per sheet and every measurement after it is real-world accurate.

Two ways to do it:

• Pick a known scale — choose from the toolbar dropdown (1/8" = 1' and friends) when the sheet is plotted true to scale.
• Calibrate — when it is not. Click Calibrate, draw a line along a dimension printed on the drawing, and type in what that dimension actually says. The app works out the scale from there.

Calibrating is the safer habit. Drawings get reduced when they are printed or scanned, and a sheet labeled quarter-inch is often nothing of the sort.

Drawing & markups.

The tools you would expect, on a canvas that stays sharp at any zoom.

Every markup carries a color, weight, and opacity, set in the Properties panel on the right. Select something and the panel opens on its own.

Selecting and editing

• Click to select. Shift + click to add to the selection.
• Drag a marquee across empty space to select many at once.
• Drag any vertex to reshape. Drag the grip above a selection to rotate it.
• Ctrl+Z undoes, Ctrl+Y redoes — fifty steps deep.

Snapping

Snap locks your cursor to real geometry so measurements land where they should: to drawing linework, to markup vertices, or to a scaled grid. A small indicator shows what you are about to snap to before you click. Toggle it from the toolbar.

Text select

Switch to the Text select tool and drag across text printed on the sheet — a panel schedule, a keynote, a circuit tag. Then Ctrl+C, or right-click and Copy. It comes across as real text. No retyping.

Measuring.

Four measuring tools, all of them scale-aware.

Give each measurement a subject — 2" EMT, Feeder, Ceiling. The takeoff totals by subject, so consistent naming is what turns marks into a bill of material. Type it once and it becomes a suggestion afterwards.

Results follow your unit setting: feet and inches, or meters. Switch any time; nothing needs re-drawing.

Counting.

Click a device, get a count. It is the workhorse.

1. Pick the Count tool.
2. Choose a symbol shape and color, and type a subject — Duplex receptacle.
3. Click each device on the sheet. The running total lives in the takeoff.

Counts can be numbered, so the twelfth receptacle prints a small 12 next to it — useful when you are checking your work against a panel schedule.

Parts & assemblies.

Where a count stops being a tally mark and starts being a material order.

Open Manage parts & assemblies from the Parts / Assemblies panel on the right rail.

Parts

A part is one thing you buy: a 4-square box, a mud ring, a duplex device. It has a part number, a description, a category, and a unit (each, foot, box). This catalog is the source of truth — edit a description here and it changes everywhere it appears.

Assemblies

An assembly is what you actually install, made of parts. A Duplex receptacle assembly might be:

• 4-square box × 1
• Mud ring × 1
• Duplex device × 1
• Pigtail × 3
• Screws × 4

Give it a symbol and a color, then place it like any count tool. Click forty devices on the sheet and the takeoff hands you 40 boxes, 40 rings, 40 devices, 120 pigtails, 160 screws. That is the whole point.

Import and export

Both tables import and export as CSV. Download the Template if you want the column headers right the first time. This is how you carry a catalog from job to job, or hand it to somebody else.

The takeoff.

Your database view of everything on the job.

Click Takeoff on the right rail. It opens as a wide window with three parts:

• Summary — every subject and assembly, with counts, lengths, and areas totaled across the whole set.
• Parts rollup — placements multiplied by quantities. The material list.
• Items — every individual markup, one per row.

The items grid

It behaves like a spreadsheet:

• Filter any column. Type into the box, or click it and pick from a list of what is actually there.
• Sort by clicking a column header. Click again to reverse it.
• Select rows with the checkboxes, then delete them all at once or reassign them to a layer.
• Edit in place. Notes and layers on any row; names on plain markups.
• Jump to a markup by clicking its Value or Sheet cell. The window closes and takes you there.

Layers.

Organize markups, and control what shows on the drawing.

Put power on one layer, lighting on another, your questions for the GC on a third. Then:

• Hide a layer and its markups leave the drawing, the legends, and the exported PDF.
• Lock a layer and its markups stay visible but cannot be selected or moved. Good for a finished scope you do not want to nudge.

Legends.

A legend that reads the sheet instead of being typed by hand.

Place a legend with the Legend tool and it fills itself in from the markups around it — each symbol, its subject, and how many there are. Keep working and it keeps up.

To pin specific markups instead, right-click one and choose Add to the legend under the Legend heading. Right-click again to remove it. Legends only show markups on visible layers, and they call assemblies and parts by their catalog names.

Search.

Two kinds. Press Ctrl+F, or open the Search tab on the rail.

Text search

Finds words printed on the drawing — a panel name, a keynote, a circuit number. Search this sheet or the entire set. Accents are ignored, so instalacion finds instalación. Click a hit to jump to it.

Symbol search — takeoff by example

This is the one that saves an afternoon.

1. Click Select symbol on sheet and drag a box around one instance of the symbol you want.
2. Search this sheet, or every sheet in the set.
3. Review the matches. Each shows a thumbnail, its score, and its sheet.
4. Uncheck any that are wrong, then click Place on N to drop counts or assemblies on all of them at once.

Match rotations finds the same symbol turned 90, 180, or 270 degrees — on by default.

The Sensitivity slider decides how close a match must be. Slide it down and you catch more, including some you did not want. Slide it up and only near-identical symbols survive. Results update the moment you move it, so drag it until the list looks right rather than guessing up front.

Comparing revisions.

Find what changed between two versions of a drawing — visually, or word by word.

Overlay compare

Pick an older sheet to overlay against the one you are looking at. The old sheet draws in red, the new in blue. Anything that moved shows up as a red and blue ghost of itself. If the two sheets were plotted with a slight offset, nudge them into alignment with the offset controls.

Text compare

For specifications and schedules, where the change is a word, not a line.

1. Click Compare documents.
2. Choose the old version — another PDF already in the set, or Choose a PDF from disk to point at one without importing it.
3. Choose the new version — the one you are marking up.
4. Click Compare.

You get a banner with every change, and a highlight on the drawing wherever one lands. Step through them with the arrows, or hit List to see them all at once with the removed text struck through and the added text underlined.

Changes come in three kinds: added, removed, and changed. Each shows the words around it, so you can tell what it is talking about without opening the original.

The redline PDF

Click PDF to build a change report you can print or email: every change numbered, with its page reference, removed text in red and added text in blue, surrounded by unchanged context in gray. There is a CSV too, if a spreadsheet is what you need.

Exporting.

Shortcuts.

Time: tracking time.

A stopwatch that knows what job you are on.

1. Pick or type a project.
2. Add a description of what you are doing.
3. Hit Start. Hit Stop when you are done.

Forgot to start the timer? Add the entry by hand with its start and end times. Forgot to stop it? Edit the entry afterwards. Nothing is locked.

Work history.

Every entry, grouped the way you would read it back.

Entries group by day, then by project, then by description, with a total for each project on each day. Hide the details to see just the day’s shape, or open them up to check a specific entry.

Anything can be edited or deleted after the fact — the time, the project, the description.

Importing & exporting.

Bring your history in from wherever it lives now, and take it out whenever you like.

Use the Import ▾ menu above the entry list. Two ways in:

From Clockify

Export a Detailed report as CSV from Clockify and drop it straight in — the columns are read as-is, no editing needed. You can select several files at once if you are pulling multiple date ranges.

From CSV

Anything else. Pick From CSV and the app shows you the format first, with a template you can download and fill in. Column headers are matched loosely, so Description, Desc, Notes, and Task all land in the same place.

Your file needs a Date column, plus either a Start and End time, or a Duration. Client and Project are optional but recommended — that is what the reports group by.

Rows with a Duration but no start time get placed at 9:00 AM. Rows that cannot be read at all are skipped and counted for you.

Export

Export CSV hands back everything currently in view, filters and all. For a payroll grid instead of a flat list, use Copy as TSV in the Timesheet.

Reports & timesheets.

Two views, for two different questions.

Breakdown

Where did the hours go? Totals by project over any date range.

Timesheet

A grid: projects down the side, days across the top, one week at a time. Step between weeks with the arrows. Show hours as h:mm or as decimal — whichever your payroll wants. Copy as TSV puts the whole grid on your clipboard, ready to paste straight into a spreadsheet.

Backup & restore.

Your work lives in this browser. Moving it anywhere is a deliberate act.

Open the ⚙ menu in the top-right of either app.

• Back up — downloads a single JSON file with everything from every app.
• Restore — loads one back. It replaces what is currently in the apps the file covers.
• Start fresh — erases everything. There is no undo, so back up first.
• User guide — opens this page in a new tab, so you can keep it beside your work.

Back up before you clear your browser data, switch machines, or try anything you are unsure about. It costs a few seconds.

Questions.

Do my drawings get uploaded anywhere?

No. The app is a single file that runs in your browser. Your PDFs are read on your machine and never sent anywhere.

Can I use it offline?

Once the page has loaded, yes.

Will my work show up on my other computer?

Not on its own. Use Back up on one and Restore on the other.

What happens if I clear my browser data?

Your work goes with it. This is the one real risk of local-first software, and a backup is the whole answer to it.

Symbol search is finding too much, or too little.

Move the Sensitivity slider. Up for stricter, down for looser. It re-filters instantly — drag it until the list looks right. If a symbol is small or faint, draw your example box a little tighter around it.

My measurements are wrong.

The sheet scale is off. Calibrate against a printed dimension rather than trusting the label in the title block.

Text compare is showing changes that are not changes.

If the drawing is a scan, its text comes from OCR and may be garbled — the comparison can only read what the PDF actually contains. On a vector PDF, re-wrapped and re-hyphenated text is ignored by design.

Can I bring in my Clockify history?

Yes — export a Detailed report as CSV and use Import → From Clockify. Duplicates are skipped, so you can safely re-import an overlapping range.

Something is wrong, or missing.

Write to bim@abarca-services.com.