Irrigation takeoff that
reads the legend.

Nothing on an irrigation plan means anything without the legend

Irrigation drawings are the most legend-dependent sheets in the set. A small circle could be a 4-inch spray, a 12-inch pop-up rotor or a bubbler depending on the symbol and the nozzle callout; a line could be a half-inch lateral or a 2-inch mainline depending on its weight; a triangle could be a control valve, a quick coupler or a backflow. You can't count anything until you've read the key — and on a real plan the key has twenty entries, the symbols repeat at small scale across a dozen sheets, and the nozzle radii are noted in tags scattered across the beds. That's why head counting by hand is so slow and so error-prone: it's symbol recognition at scale, not measurement.

Pilars works the way an irrigation estimator works: legend first. It reads the irrigation legend and the head schedule, builds the symbol dictionary for this set, and then classifies every symbol on every sheet against it. The result is a head schedule by type and nozzle, pipe by size split between lateral and mainline, valve and zone counts that match the head groupings, wire runs, and the sleeve crossings — each tied back to the symbol it was read from.

Where irrigation bids actually leak

Heads counted as a single total instead of by type — sprays, rotors, drip and bubblers price differently, and a flat count hides the mix. Lateral and mainline lumped into one pipe number when they're different pipe, different fittings and different cost per foot. Valve and zone counts that don't reconcile with the head groupings, so a zone gets dropped. Wire runs estimated off the valve count instead of traced, when the controller-to-valve home runs are real linear footage. And the one that bites in the field: the sleeves. Pipe and wire crossing under paving, drives and walks need sleeves placed before the hardscape goes down, and that scope hides in the plan and the sleeving detail. Miss it at bid and you're trenching back through finished concrete.

Pilars reads each of these off the plan. Heads come back by type, nozzle and radius. Pipe comes back as linear footage by size, lateral separated from mainline. Valves, zones, the backflow, master valve and flow sensor at the point of connection are counted and reconciled against the zones they feed. Wire runs are traced. And every sleeve crossing under hardscape is flagged with size and length, so the sleeving is in the bid, not the change order.

• Heads by type and nozzle — spray, rotor, drip, bubbler — with radius
• Pipe LF by size, lateral split from mainline by line weight and legend
• Control valves, zones, backflow, master valve and flow sensor counted and reconciled
• Controller-to-valve wire runs traced as linear feet
• Sleeve crossings under paving, drives and walks flagged with size and length

What the AI actually reads off an irrigation sheet

The reading starts with the legend and the head schedule, because that's the only thing that makes the symbols mean anything. Once the dictionary is built, Pilars classifies every head symbol against it and reads the nozzle and radius tags so a 5-foot spray and a 25-foot rotor don't end up in the same bucket. It follows the piping by line weight — the heavy mainline back to the point of connection, the lighter laterals out to the heads — and accumulates linear footage by size. It identifies the control valves and the zone each one feeds, then checks that the zone count, the head groupings and the valve count tell the same story.

On the things that hide, it does the work estimators skip under deadline: it traces the controller wiring as real runs rather than guessing from valve count, and it reads the plan and sleeving details for every place pipe or wire crosses under hardscape, returning the sleeve size and length. The output is organized the way an irrigation proposal is — heads by type, pipe by size and class, valves and zones, wire, sleeves, and point-of-connection assembly — with each quantity traceable to the symbol or callout it came from so your review is fast.

Honest about what it is

Pilars reads 2D irrigation and site plans — the same legend-driven sheets you bid from today. It is not a hydraulic design tool and it does not invent zones or runs that aren't drawn; where the legend is incomplete or a symbol is ambiguous it tells you, rather than guessing the type. You stay the estimator. What changes is that the slow, legend-first symbol counting that eats an afternoon — heads by type, pipe by size, valves, zones, wire and sleeves — happens in minutes, with every number tied to the symbol it was read from.

Pricing is straightforward: $100 per trade, per plan. No per-seat licenses, no annual contract, unlimited projects. Run it on your own irrigation set in the demo and check the head schedule against your last count before you decide anything.

Questions estimators actually ask