Certainly nothing new about electronic drawings. All of our invites come with links to document downloads.
Plans are either plotted in-house or emailed to reprographics house and delivered(at our expense). In either case we have physical printed plans to work from.
I could never do a takeoff on-screen and feel comfortable. I guess I'm old school, but I can't scan the entire drawing from my computer screen as I can with a full drawing in front of me. My estimate plans are also my record of how I takeoff the job. Each plan sheet and all of my notes and scribblings match up with my audit trail of my software. I make notes on the drawings, I lay out home runs, feeders, color code fixtures/devices. When I'm done with an estimate, there is a ton of info on my drawings that I want to keep. Those plans never leave my office, even after I get awarded the job. When questions arise during construction, you can come to me and I can show you exactly how I figured a feeder or home run.
If it's kind of cool how it counts fixtures or devices, I bet by the time you set that program up to find a symbol. I have counted all of the fixtures on that sheet.
If I was an estimator for a trade the prices by the sq/ft or lineal ft, that might be helpful.
