bScaler - Drawing Scaling & Mark-up

Scale, measure & mark up PDF, PNG & JPG drawings or a satellite-map grab, then export a marked-up PDF with a scale bar.

bScaler - It's like CAD, but for PDF, image and satellite-map drawings. The perfect drawing scaling & mark-up tool for Architects, Engineers, Surveyors & Contractors. Turn any PDF, PNG or JPG drawing - or a scaled aerial you grab straight from a map - into a working scaled drawing, right in your browser. bScaler lets you set a scale, measure distances and areas, read off coordinates and levels, mark up the drawing, and export the result as a PDF, a CSV of survey points, or a DXF for CAD. It runs entirely on your own machine, needs no sign-in, and asks for no permissions - your drawings never leave your computer. Built by Bury Associates Limited, Land & Measured Building Surveyors, for anyone who needs quick, reliable measurements from a PDF plan, a scanned drawing, a site elevation or an aerial view. OPEN PDFs AND IMAGES - Open vector or scanned PDFs, or plain image drawings in PNG and JPG - scale, measure and mark up all of them exactly the same way. - Perfect for full-size scans and images of drawings as well as CAD-produced PDFs. GRAB A DRAWING FROM A MAP - No drawing to hand? Open the built-in satellite map, search a postcode or address, frame your site and capture it as a correctly-scaled aerial image, ready to measure and mark up. No manual scaling needed. - The capture area is a clear 16:9 box with the rest of the view shaded, so you see exactly what you will get. A fine zoom slider lets you fill it precisely. - Uses free standard imagery out of the box. Paste a free Mapbox token for sharper imagery if you want it - and if it is ever unavailable it falls back to the standard imagery automatically, so it never costs you anything. IMPORT KML - Bring in a KML file and its points, lines and polygons come in as editable bScaler survey points, lines and areas - ready to measure, label and mark up like anything else you have drawn. - Import a KML before you have a drawing and the map opens framed on the KML, with its extent outlined in yellow, so you can see exactly what to capture. Grab the aerial and your features drop straight onto it, correctly placed. - Points keep their KML name as their point ID, so your stations come across already labelled. SET THE SCALE YOUR WAY - Scale by sheet size and drawing scale (A0 to A4 and custom sizes, common metric and imperial ratios, or your own) - for images too, when a full-size scan still shows its sheet size. - Or scale from a known length or scale bar - click two points, type the real distance, done. - Drawing stretched unevenly? Set the scale separately across and up (X and Y) from a known horizontal length and a known vertical length, so a drawing that is slightly out in one direction still measures true in both. - Lock a scale reference exactly horizontal or vertical with Ortho while you pick it. - Map grabs come in already scaled. - Works in metric (mm, m) or imperial (feet-inches, square feet). MEASURE WITH CONFIDENCE - Distance tool for single lines and running (multi-point) dimensions, with a live running total as you go. - Area tool with live area and an optional perimeter readout. - Point tool to drop numbered count markers, read off X/Y coordinates against a coordinate system you set, or read off levels against a datum you set. - Grab from a map and every point reads off its position automatically, straight onto the aerial - no coordinate system to set up. - Choose the grid your map-grab coordinates are shown in: latitude and longitude, UTM, or a national grid (British National Grid, Irish Transverse Mercator, France Lambert-93, Netherlands RD, Switzerland LV95, New Zealand NZTM, and more), with an Auto setting that picks the right one for wherever you grabbed. Coordinates from an aerial are a guide, not a survey, so they show to the nearest metre by default - raise the decimals whenever you need them. - Give every survey point an alpha-numeric point ID (auto-incrementing - S12 becomes S14 with an increment of 2, or AB becomes AC) and a feature code, ready for export. - Type an exact distance, radius or arrow / section length while you draw - just press D. - Ortho drawing: lock to the sheet's square, to your coordinate grid once you have aligned its axes, or to your own two-point direction (select it and pick the two points, any time). SNAP TO WHAT MATTERS Snapping locks your points onto the drawing's own vector geometry AND onto everything you have already added - your mark-ups, survey points, distances and areas. On scanned or image drawings, where there is no vector line-work, you can still snap to whatever you have drawn: - Endpoints and corners - Mid-points - Along a line - Intersections - Perpendicular from your last point - Centres of circles, arcs and rectangles - Nearest point on any line Turn each snap type on or off in Settings or in the drawing pop-up. MARK UP THE DRAWING A full set of mark-up tools, all of which snap and export: - Text - multi-line notes, sized to the drawing so they scale naturally as you zoom; select a note and rotate it about its base in 5-degree steps with the left and right arrow keys. - Lines - single or multi-segment, and you can turn any line into a smooth curve that runs through the points you placed. - Polygons - click round to close a shape; make it curved too, or give it a transparent fill like an area. - Rectangles and circles - two-point, or press R or C for a three-point rotated rectangle or a circle set through three points; rectangles and polygons can take a transparent fill. - Arrows - a clean line with a slim arrowhead; draw them to any length, or type an exact length as you go. - Section and elevation markers - a cut line with fixed-size direction arrows and an auto-incrementing label (A, B, C...), looking one way or both ways, with the label at one or both ends. - Pick any colour (default red), or let measurements colour themselves automatically. - Edit anything from the side list: change colour and properties, resize text, adjust a circle's radius or an arrow's / section's length, make a line or polygon curved, fill a polygon, rectangle or area and set how solid the fill is with a slider, or rename a point. - Duplicate any element from the edit panel - a copy drops in alongside, ready to drag into place. - Drag the mid-point handle on any edge of a distance, area, mark-up line or polygon to add a new point there. - Everything you draw snaps to the drawing and to your other mark-ups, with a clear marker showing exactly where a point has locked on - when placing and when dragging a point to a new position. CLEAR, EDITABLE LABELS - Drag the total, the perimeter and every individual segment or side length label to a tidy new position, each with a leader line back to the shape. Double-click a label to snap it home. - Use the Labels tool to cycle what each measurement shows - value, all lengths, area plus perimeter, value only, labels off, or lines only. - Cycle survey-point labels through value, ID and feature code, X and Y coordinates, and more - or switch individual fields on and off per point with the edit pencil. - Reshape an area on the fly: drag the small mid-point handle on any edge to add a new corner. SCALE BAR & TITLE BLOCK - Turn on a scale bar and a title block in Settings. The scale bar sits bottom right and the title block top right by default. - Select and drag either one anywhere on the drawing; drag the corner handle to resize the title block; double-click the title to edit its text, or double-click the scale bar to set its length exactly (or leave it on Auto). - Your title text is remembered between drawings, so you only edit the parts that change. - Both print into the exported PDF exactly where you leave them. LAYERS (FOR PDFs THAT HAVE THEM) When a PDF contains layers, a Layers tab appears alongside Measurements & Mark-ups: - Turn any layer off and on with a clear eye icon. - Isolate a single layer to see it on its own. - "Off by clicking": press the button, then click a line or a piece of text in the drawing to switch off its whole layer. - With the Select tool, click a line or text in the original PDF to see which layer it belongs to. ZOOM AND NAVIGATE - Zoom with the scroll wheel, a zoom box, or fit-to-page. - Set a working area so Fit always zooms straight to the part of the drawing you care about. - Hold Space (or middle-mouse) to pan while you work. - Full undo and redo. - Open a new drawing and your drawing-specific settings reset cleanly, while your preferences (units, snaps, colours) carry over. EXPORT YOUR WORK - Marked-up PDF: your measurements, points and mark-ups drawn back onto the original sheet, with shaded areas, clear linework and every label sized to read clearly - even on large scanned drawings. - Marked-up PNG: the drawing with all your mark-ups as a single flat image, ready to drop straight into a report, an email or another document. - Add a scale bar and a title block to the exported PDF, positioned wherever you left them, so anyone viewing it can judge sizes and see the drawing details at a glance. - Survey points to CSV: point ID, feature code, easting and northing in your chosen grid, level, and latitude and longitude when the image is geo-referenced from a map grab - choose which fields and what order. - CAD-ready DXF: exports the original drawing - its line-work and its text, on tidy layers - plus your measurements and mark-ups, respecting colours, rotation and text sizes, so the whole drawing comes across to your CAD package. - CSV and DXF exports respect any coordinate system you have set, so everything lands on the correct grid. PRIVATE BY DESIGN bScaler deliberately requests zero permissions. There is no account, no upload and no tracking. Everything happens locally in your browser, so confidential drawings stay with you. (When you grab from a map, only the aerial tiles and the address you type are fetched; your drawings never leave your machine.) IMPORTANT - ACCURACY Scaled drawings are not always accurate. A measurement is only as good as the scale you set and the quality of the source drawing - margins can affect a sheet size, and scans can be slightly stretched. Aerial imagery grabbed from a map is a guide only and is not a survey. Always check critical dimensions against a properly scaled source before relying on them, and use the across-and-up (X and Y) scaling if a drawing is out in one direction. bScaler is provided as a free aid and no liability is accepted for decisions made using it. ABOUT BURY ASSOCIATES Bury Associates Limited are Land & Measured Building Surveyors working throughout the UK. Our services include topographical surveys, measured building surveys (CAD & Revit), 3D modelling and BIM, land registry drawings, setting out, Matterport 3D tours, reality capture and digital twins, underground services tracing and CCTV drainage surveys, and monitoring surveys. Find out more at www.buryassociates.co.uk. bScaler is a free tool. We hope you find it useful - feedback is always welcome.