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 and Contractors. Turn any PDF, PNG or JPG drawing - a scaled aerial you grab straight from a map, or a screenshot of any window on your screen - into a working, scaled drawing, right in your browser. Set a scale, measure distances and areas, read off real-world coordinates and levels, mark the drawing up, and export the result as a PDF, a PNG, a CSV of survey points, a DXF for CAD or a KML for Google Earth. Frame the export to a true landscape or portrait sheet whenever you need to, and save the whole job as a project to pick up later. bScaler 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. - Multi-page PDFs are fully supported. Step through the pages with the arrows at the top and each page keeps its own scale and mark-ups. - Even encrypted PDFs - like HM Land Registry official copies - open, scale, mark up and export. 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, so you see exactly what you will get. - The map navigates just like the drawing itself: scroll to zoom about your cursor, drag to pan, and use the Box button to zoom straight to an area. An optional road and place-name overlay helps you frame the site (a guide only, not baked into the grab). - Uses free standard imagery out of the box. Paste a free Mapbox token for sharper imagery if you want it, and it falls back automatically if that is ever unavailable, so it never costs you anything. GRAB FROM A SCREENSHOT - Bring in anything on your screen. Click "Grab from a screenshot", pick any window, tab or whole screen, and bScaler captures it as a drawing ready to scale and mark up - a CAD viewer, a web map, a PDF in another app, a photo, anything. - Works across multiple monitors: pick exactly which display or window to grab, at full resolution. GEOREFERENCE FROM A MAP (TWO POINTS) - Have a drawing with no stated scale? Open it, then open the map, search for your site, and pick two points you can spot on both - building corners, manhole covers, boundary markers. - Pick the same two points on your drawing and bScaler sets the scale AND a real-world coordinate system in one step, using the correct national grid for wherever your site is (British National Grid by default in the UK). - Reachable from the Scale menu or Settings - two clicks on the map, two on the drawing, done. 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. - Let bScaler use the PDF's own page size, so a drawing that states a ratio but no sheet size just needs the ratio typing in. - Or scale from a known length or scale bar - click two points, type the real distance, done. - Or scale straight from an aerial map by picking two points on the map and the same two on the drawing (see above). - 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. Cut a void out of an area with a Subtraction - it is cross-hatched so it reads clearly, and the area's measurement drops to the net figure. Add as many cut-outs as you need; once you have chosen the area to cut from, bScaler keeps cutting from it until you tell it otherwise. - 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. Your coordinate origin and datum show a clear on-screen marker and label (a visual aid only). - Edit a point's X, Y and Z in the pencil: type a coordinate to place it exactly, or enter a level that carries through to your CSV. - Grab from a map and every point reads off its position automatically, straight onto the aerial - no coordinate system to set up. - Every distance and area reads in your main unit by default, however large. When a value is big enough to warrant it, one click of the Labels tool switches it to kilometres, hectares, miles or acres - and back again. - Choose the grid your real-world 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 your location. 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. - Any feature with a real-world position gets a globe icon in the side list - click it to open a close aerial view of that spot in Google Maps. - Give every survey point an auto-incrementing alpha-numeric point ID 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, or curve just the part between two nodes. - Areas - click round to measure an area; make its edges curved (all of them, or just between two nodes you pick) and the area and perimeter follow the true curved shape. Subtract cross-hatched cut-outs for voids and islands, and the area reports the net figure. - 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, curve or straighten a line or area, 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. 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. Values stay in your main unit by default; the next click offers the larger unit (hectares, square kilometres, miles or acres) whenever a measurement is big enough to need it. - 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. SCALE BAR & TITLE BLOCK - Turn on a scale bar and a title block in Settings, or with a quick tick-box on each one's edit pop-up. 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. On a multi-page PDF they follow the page you are working on. - Set an export Sheet and both sit neatly inside it, so they always land within your landscape or portrait page. - 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. - "Isolate by clicking": press the button, then click a line or text and everything except that layer switches off. - 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 about your cursor, drag a zoom Box, or fit-to-page. - Hold Space (or middle-mouse) to pan while you work. - Step through the pages of a multi-page PDF with the arrows at the top. - Set a working area so Fit always zooms straight to the part of the drawing you care about. - Full undo and redo, and a Refresh button to cleanly redraw the drawing whenever you want. - Open a new drawing and your drawing-specific settings reset cleanly, while your preferences (units, snaps, colours) carry over. SET AN EXPORT SHEET (LANDSCAPE OR PORTRAIT) - Frame your export with the Sheet control: choose Landscape, Portrait, or the current window, and a page-shaped frame drops onto the drawing with everything outside it dimmed. - Drag the frame to position it and pull a corner to resize it - landscape and portrait keep true page proportions. Choose the window option instead and you can drag any edge or corner to make a sheet of any size and shape you like. - Fit zooms to the sheet, and your scale bar and title block tuck neatly inside it. Reset in one click to go back to the whole drawing. - Both PDF and PNG exports output exactly what is inside the sheet - nothing is cropped, only masked. 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, and on multi-page and encrypted PDFs. Your text and labels stay the right way up even on drawings that were saved rotated. Export the PDF at a true paper size - A0 to A4, or ANSI A to E - and it opens fit-to-page, ready to print. - Marked-up PNG: the drawing with all your mark-ups as a flat image, ready to drop into a report, email or document - the whole view, or just your sheet. - 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 drawing is geo-referenced - 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. - Google Earth KML: exports your points, lines and areas as placemarks for any geo-referenced drawing (a map grab, an imported KML, or a two-point georeference), carrying their bScaler colours across, so your work drops straight onto Google Earth looking the way you left it. - CSV, DXF and KML exports respect any coordinate system you have set, so everything lands on the correct grid. SAVE AND CONTINUE LATER - Save the whole job - the drawing, its scale, coordinates, datum and every mark-up - as a single bScaler project file, then re-open it any time to carry on exactly where you left off, on this machine or another. - It is one self-contained file: nothing is uploaded and nothing leaves your computer. Re-open it from the Files menu, or just drag it back in. 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.