On a self-hosted Speckle Enterprise Server, your server administrator turns on Intelligence and
connects it to your organisation’s AI provider. See Enable
Intelligence.
This is the Chat-driven route. For a dashboard you can pin, share, and keep open on a screen
instead of asking for it each time, build a quantity takeoff
dashboard instead — the two
approaches read the same published data.
What this workflow does
- Take off — count and total elements by category, level, or any other property, without building the breakdown in a dashboard first.
- Price — apply your own unit rates and cost codes instead of a generic estimate.
- Flag gaps — call out anything with no matching rate, rather than inventing a number.
- Reuse — pin the rate card once so every future takeoff on any project uses this year’s prices.
Walkthrough
1
Pin your rate card as Knowledge
In workspace Settings → Skills, create a skill and pin your rate card (a spreadsheet, or a
live warehouse table if finance keeps it there) as
Knowledge. Write the unit rates and cost
codes into the skill’s instructions in your own language — elemental, package, or whatever your
commercial team already calls them. See Reuse organisation playbooks with Intelligence
skills.
2
Ask for the takeoff
In Chat, arm the skill with
/skill-name and ask in plain language:Give me a material takeoff, priced against our rate card.Intelligence reads quantities from the published model — the same connected, queryable data it uses for any other question — and matches each line against the pinned rate card.
3
Read the breakdown
The reply groups quantities the way your skill’s instructions say to — by category, level, or
package — with each line priced. Anything without a matching rate is called out separately
instead of estimated, so a missing row is visible rather than silently averaged away.
4
Ask a what-if question
Keep going in the same conversation:
What’s the impact on cost if steel goes up by 15%?Intelligence recalculates from the same quantities and the same pinned rates, so the answer reflects your actual take-off, not a generic assumption.
Share it beyond the chat
Save the conversation as a Report if you want a shareable artefact — the takeoff and its pricing stay live against the bound version rather than frozen at the moment you asked. For a takeoff someone will keep open and re-filter by level or category on a screen, use the dashboard route in Run a quantity takeoff instead; the Elements table widget there also exports to CSV.FAQ
Does it use my company's units and rounding?
Does it use my company's units and rounding?
Only if you say so. Put your unit and rounding conventions in the skill’s instructions —
Intelligence does not know your commercial team’s conventions unless you tell it once, in the
skill.
What happens if an element has no matching rate?
What happens if an element has no matching rate?
It gets flagged as unmatched rather than priced by guesswork. Write that behaviour into the
skill explicitly (see the cost, carbon, and quantities skill
catalogue) if you want the flag to
use a specific phrase your commercial team recognises.
Does this need a version in the 2026.9 data format?
Does this need a version in the 2026.9 data format?
Yes. Like every other Intelligence query, a takeoff needs a version in the data format
introduced in 2026.9. Versions published before 2026.9 can’t be queried; publish again with a
2026.9 connector. See Speckle’s new data model.
Can I get the same breakdown without a rate card?
Can I get the same breakdown without a rate card?
Yes — just ask for the takeoff without pricing, for example “give me a material takeoff” or
“give me a report of quantities by category and level.” Pricing only kicks in once you’ve pinned
a rate card in a skill.